Three SnackGulls

I couldn't be prouder of this Chekhovian mashup I wrote and act in, which got some nice reviews

here (THEASY.com)

and

here (nytheatre.com)

Incidentally, it's playing at HERE (HERE Arts Center)

OUR FARM SNACK

As you may or may not know, I am acting in a play that opens this Saturday at The Cherry Pit called The Theatrical Assembly of Self-Realized Animals Presents OUR FARM. I love this play and the people involved with it, and I sincerely hope you can attend. The tickets are onsale now through www.smarttix.com (just search for OUR FARM and there they will be!). Go HERE to learn more about the show. Here's a google map so you can find the theatre.

If you can come this Saturday, it would be amazing! We have some reviewers coming, and you could definitely help us show them a good time :) If not, then next week is good too.



The Theatrical Assembly of Self-Realized Animals Presents

Our Farm

by Andrew Farmer

directed by Andrew Neisler

Featuring: Jaclyn Backhaus, Nigel DeFriez, Grace Folsom, Rafael Goldstein, Alex Johnson, John Kurzynowski, Max Reuben, Claire Rothrock, Ryann Weir, and Alyssa Yackley

Set Design by Karina Martins

Costume Design by Ellie Famutimi

Lighting Design by Gloria Johnson

Sound Design by Rob Ribar

Projection Design by Andrew Scoville and Jonathan Solari

Stage Management by Jes Levine

Produced by Cat Machak and Emily Hammerman in association with The Centrifuge

at The Cherry Pit, 155 Bank Street, New York

Saturday, September 26

Wednesday, September 30

Thursday, October 1st

Friday, October 2nd

Saturday, October 3rd

**ALL PERFORMANCES AT 9:00pm**

-

Tickets are only $15

go to smarttix.com for reservations

Outlying Snack

Everyone is possessed with an innate and natural talent for something. For some it's very specifically one thing, for others it may be quite a few. I finished The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell earlier this summer, and in it he expounds upon the magic 10,000 Hours-- the number of hours it takes of practice, experience, pure and sheer work on the thing at which you will excel. The Beatles logged about 10,000 Hours in Hamburg playing cover songs 6 nights a week in skeazy nightclubs, testing and setting new limits in their ability to experiment with several musical genres, all before "Love Me Do" in 1962. Bill Gates worked as a programmer for some computer test center while he was still in high school, and he logged 10,000 Hours doing that before Microsoft was even a twinkle in his nerdy bespectacled eye. Da Geniuses of Da World, it seems, do what they love and love what they do so much and so passionately, that it is no problem for them to reach that number, and subsequently reach greatness.

For all of the kids my age, the ones who went to my school and majored in Theatre: I calculated that, assuming that you did drama club or theater company or whatnot for all four years of high school, and assuming that you did studio all four years of college and maintained a heavy evening presence throughout rehearsing on the 2nd floor of Tisch, and assuming that you have worked rather steadily (not insanely either, like, a bundle of hours of rehearsal/theatrical endeavour a week) since you've graduated, that we have all surpassed the 10,000 Hour Mark sometime this summer, or we will be doing so this fall.

So, Congratulations. You are on the fast track to becoming a Bona Fide Creative Genius, and according to the aforementioned existing models, we have all the right to change the world . Keep doing what you love and Loving what you do. As my brother said when he visited this summer, "Watching you guys find time to do what you love just because you love it, it's like watching the future of stuff."

The only thing I've logged as much time or more on as this is probably investing myself in fictional love stories, which may or may not hold as promising or lucrative a future.

ELATED SNACK

I JUST FOUND EVERY DVD THAT I THOUGHT I HAD LOST FOREVER IN A BOX UNDERNEATH MY BED THAT I THOUGHT ONLY HELD OLD SOUND DESIGNS.









hey! look! i'm holding kate hudson!

Update Snack

Call me corny or call me sentimental. (You can. Seriously. Both of these things may be true.) But Twelfth Night has been my favorite Shakespeare show since very early memory. It was the first Shakespeare I ever saw, actually; in Telluride, after fishing or playing soccer or something else with my family when I was young, we stumbled upon an evening production in one of their giant parks. It was the scene where Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek and that other guy are hiding in the bushes while Malvolio reads the faulty letter. And my brother literally could not stop laughing. He was laughing so hard through the next few scenes that the usher had to come over him and tell us to calm him down or we would have to leave. I think we ended up leaving. I hadn't scene a production since then, but I did Viola's monologues in high school. And there was the time in Actors and Directors in college, where someone did a scene from it and Mary Robinson laughed so hard that she fell off her chair. The class stopped in horror and a fit of giggles, and from behind the risers in the corner we saw her hand frantically waving us on: "I'M FINE! KEEP GOING."

And the production I saw tonight lived up to all of my expectations and childhood memories. Anne Hathaway was mesmerizing, Audra MacDonald was radiant, Hamish Linklater was da best. I laughed hard (though not as hard as my brother...?), I cried a little (for happy rather than sad), and I felt a distinct surge of joy throughout, and rightness. I had better seats than Angela Lansbury. Opa was probably jealous of me, or he was there, smiling, wondering if she'll ever do a follow-up to Murder, She Wrote.

And tonight was a Full Moon.

W[h]ine Snack

Ugh! I had to wake up at FIVE THIRTY this morning because I HAD to go to wait in line for tickets in Central Park for Twelfth Night. And I spent SIX HOURS reading a novel and the Sunday Times and eating a BaconEggAndCheese under a gigantic TREE. Ugh, and then I got some of the LAST tickets! Ugh, and then I had to WALK home through Central Park and all I saw were hilarious DUCKS and some young gentlemen STICKFIGHTING and and old man teaching his granddaughters how to FISH. And THEN I went home and made pasta and watched 30 ROCK and read more of this TOME that I started in the morning. And NOW I have to get READY for the SHOW, during which the imbibing of ALCOHOL from SELF-PREPARED PLASTIC BOTTLES is READILY AND HEARTILY CONDONED. UGH.

Woe is me and my awesome day.

PS:

"Elsewhere in the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn--and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn: human life continues to throb.

"So, let us drink a cup of tea."

-Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Snackinee

Going to see August: Osage County this afternoon! Then I go straight to work! I feel so busy and excited.

Birthday party this weekend, coupled with a visit from The Boopsie Himself. I can't wait for Ben's debut in lowbrow New York Society.

Piano Snack

I just finished reading a play called The Harwich Piano. It is a play partially based on real events written by my friend Alex Johnson. I have a lot of questions that I want to ask him. It is a lovely and strange sort of play, with a lot of truth in its bones.

Once, I was toying with a title of a play I wrote. My choices were The Forgetting of Things and The Way It Always Will Be. I asked Alex which of the two he liked better, and he said, "Definitely the first one. The second sounds like the title of a Neil LaBute play."

Your challenge for the day: Overhear a phrase that sounds like a Neil LaBute play. Remember it. Tell it to me sometime. I've started collecting them, although I have no formal catalogue system yet; they are all over the place in this journal and that.

August Osnack County

So August: Osage County closes literally a week from Sunday. And the crime of the century/year is I have not seen nor read it. Who wants to go with me? Show of hands. Kay.

SingerSnackWriter

Shiny Snack

I have a friend. We'll call her Claire. She's great! She has great taste in Thai food AND teas, which I normally don't like but they've been alright today, and she also makes Tortellini! She is a fan of T things. Today, together, we won Times Square. We got there in the morning and won a show, and then we went onstage in the show, the show called HAIR! And I nuzzled with the face my friend Theo. Then, we won another show, called EXIT THE KING! And that show was a spectacular and wild ride. We met a boy named Geoff afterward, and we double teamed him and his friend Suze with cameras and sharpies. They were both acting in the show and they were both quite skilled. Suze has a dog, and Geoff has great taste in blazers! Then me and Claire basically went on a rampage, shooting pins at the tires of trucks and shouting expletives at tourists and taking lollipops from toddlers. And it was all very cute, just like my life, check it!



i want to take a ride on your disco stick

Rush Snack

Of the Geoffrey/Student persuasion

Chocolate Snacktory

Today I saw a bunch of shows as part of Target Margin's "Theater of Tomorrow" Festival at The Chocolate Factory in Queenz. It was a really awesome night of shows that made me laugh and cry and realize how much I, too, think about fonts. I have been to Queenz a total of like four not-including-LaGuardia times. I think I will go more often. They have a Biergieardien! I didn't go to that. But I did walk around and I happened upon a shop called "Just Things." And I LOVE Things!

I bought a blue bottle that looks like this:



Go See The Shows.

I saw A Family of Perhaps Three and The Stein/Wilder Night.

Black Canyon ReadingSnack

Come see the world premiere reading of

Black Canyon City: A History
written by Jaclyn Backhaus
directed by Andrew Neisler

part of the Groundwork Reading Series at breedingground productions' Spring Fever Festival!

"Hunter Wilcox is no scientist, but he spends his nights with tonic bottles and phonographs in the middle of an old mining town, conducting experiments that he hopes will help him solve some odd mysteries. In Black Canyon City, the souls of the dead seek out living ears to tell their stories and living bodies to uncover their best-kept secrets. It’s a place where nothing worthwhile happens ‘til the sun goes down. And down by the fire, things are happening…"

ONE DAY ONLY!
June 6th, 2009
4 pm
The Robert Moss Theatre (nee The Linhart Theatre)
440 Lafayette St. 3rd Floor
across from The Public Theater

Starring: Jessie Barr*, Yung-I Chang, Ellie Famutimi, Matthew R Gehring, Lena Hudson, Michael Lister, David Morris, and Dan Pfau

Tickets are available at

http://www.breedingground.com/sff/tickets/index.htm

Come out and support breedingground productions and the development of this exciting new project!

*appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.

Gloria Huddle Snack

Headshot Snack

Getting my headshots done today!

With any luck, they'll turn out like this:

Opening Thursday Snack

visit http://thecentrifugeny.blogspot.com for Ticket information.

Atlanta Snack

These are some snacks I will enjoy while in Atlanta this weekend: