What does an actor love?

If I were sane, or, even merely a betting man, I would guess almost nothing. 

 

Surely it is not the unemployment, which is frequent.

 

Not the eight-show week. 

Not the just-for-the-holidays nine show week. 

And not even the six-show week, which is mysteriously just as exhausting. 

 

Not the matinee.

Not the two-show day.

Not Saturday night after the two-show day, when civilians suggest “getting a drink” as though you have not just spent seven hours being emotionally obliterated beneath industrial-strength, gorgeously designed lighting.

 

Not the dressing room with no window, the apartment with no dishwasher, the hotel room containing one fork and a refrigerator apparently designed to chill three individual grapes. 

 

Not the audition. Certainly not the self-tape. Not the self-tape requiring a reader, a tripod, two full-body shots, a slate, a song of your own choosing and, presumably, a minor in cinematography.

 

Not the dignity, which you surrendered somewhere around the third callback requiring you to “bring movement clothes just in case.” 

 

Surely not the stability. 

 

Not the money.

 

Dear God, not the money.

 

Not the magnificent union health insurance one spends half one's career trying to qualify for. 

Not unemployment forms. 

Not taxes in seven states. 

Not learning that you apparently earned $68 in Ohio eleven months ago and Ohio would now like to discuss it.

 

Not the the glamorous housing, with its miniature refrigerator, useless saucepan and mattress designed by the CIA.

  

Not the notes.  

Not the reviews. Not the absence of reviews. Not the reviews one claims not to have read and can nevertheless quote verbatim seventeen years later.

 

Not opening.

Not closing.

 

Not the exquisite little death of packing one's dressing room into a tote bag while you hear the demolition-screech of the work crew dismantling the world you have inhabited for six months, twenty feet away.

 

 

And yes, we Theatre People kvetch and winge and bemoan and complain because the theatre really does ask so very much of a person.

 

Time, for one thing. Evenings. Weekends. Christmases. Summers. The years when other people acquire houses and sensible shoes.

 

It asks for the body. Eight times a week, please. Healthy or tired, heartbroken or menstruating, grieving or merely middle aged.

 

It asks for faith without evidence. Patience without guarantees. Rejection without bitterness. Confidence without arrogance. Vulnerability on command. 

 

It asks you to leave home. To live in strange apartments with one spoon. 

 

To love people ferociously and then, on a Sunday evening, pack your dressing room into a grocery bag and perhaps never see them again.

 

It asks you to begin again.

 

And again.

 

And again.

 

And it is this astonishing knowledge—blindingly elegant in its straightforwardness—that after a lifetime of all rejection, airports, bus terminals, callbacks, unemployment, bad digs, good reviews, bad reviews, illness, heartbreak, triumph, disappointment, eight-show weeks and Sunday-night trains—that I am, somehow, still here.

 

An entire ridiculous life is narrowed to one illuminated stagedoor I have walked through one hundred thousand times. 

 

I am still here. 

Still standing in the dark, just beyond the light. 

Experiencing that humiliating, inconvenient, financially indefensible sensation:

 

Oh.

Right.

This.

 

This ancient, sacred, indescribable-in-its-profundity human ritual, is what I love.  

That's why. 

 

Perhaps the mystery isn't how I ended up here, but why, after everything, I still love it.

  

What does a person owe the thing she has loved all her life?

The theatre asks for everything. 

Surely thirty years is enough payment, I think, more often than I care to admit. 

And yet, beneath all the indignities, compromises, dressing rooms, unemployment, bad housing, opening nights, closings, and years spent wondering whether one really ought to have become a lawyer—I stayed. 

  

And I am beginning to understand, belatedly, that nothing in this artistic life was ever owed in the first place.

Only offered.

Only entered.

Only returned to, again and again; the ritual we cannot quite stop believing will change us, one rising curtain at a time.

 

I Would Like to Report That I Am Thriving (Deranged Edition)

Oh hello. WTF. I am currently in Los Angeles having the most important professional experience of my entire career.

 

Let me say that again, because it sounds fake even to me:
I am at the Pasadena Playhouse working on the world premiere of my new adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon. 

 

Which, yes. I wrote. Like… I wrote it. 

With my human brain. 

And now real actors—gorgeous, talented, emotionally available unicorns are speaking the words and ideas and character arcs out loud while I sit behind a table laughing and crying and pretending I know what I’m doing and not, say, internet-searching “what does the playwright do during rehearsal besides spiral?”

 

To be clear: this is all, objectively, the dream.

So naturally, my psyche responded by committing seppuku. Because, let's not forget: I am me. 

 

At one point, mid-week, I had the very fun realization that maybe I’m “not good enough”… Or maybe I am simply a woman who has been expertly trained—by the ambient noise of culture—to hate myself on a cellular level despite a decade of therapy, a trip to literal Siberia, and several well-intentioned journaling phases.

 

Because here’s what’s wild: nothing around me suggested I was failing.

The work is good. The room is phenomenal. The people are extraordinary.

And yet my brain was like "Yes, but what if you are secretly a fraud and everyone is too polite to say so?"

 

So let's review. Within the span of one week, I have:

• Had a full-body emotional meltdown (positive) hearing my writing spoken aloud

• Had a full-body emotional meltdown (negative) hearing my writing spoken aloud

• Navigated sitting “behind the table” while internally whispering "they’re going to find you out..."
• Experienced an existential crisis so vast it could qualify for its own zip code
• Gotten my period (obviously. the uterus always clocks in for chaos) and "pulled" three other uterus-having humans off their cycle because I'm a trend setter
• Been pulled over by a traffic cop for driving too slowly, which I did not know was illegal exactly, but apparently is if you are radiating panic at 37 miles per hour along the 101.
• Been interviewed for a profile piece in the Los Angeles Times and photographed with legendary American playwright (and Alec's idol) David Henry Hwang, which is the kind of sentence that should belong to someone with much better posture
• Watched my computer die spectacularly! Forcing me to deal with the not-so-genius CARLOS at the Genius Bar, and spend $1400 I definitely don't have on a replacement, while whispering “this is fine...”

 

All of this while my husband was visiting for five too-brief days, during which he demonstrated the patience of a saint who has accepted that he married a woman who will—at any moment—combust over art and printer settings.

 

*

 

And THEN—because the universe is frankly a little aggressive—I remembered: Oh. This is what always happens right before you level up. I have been here before!

 

The migraine during the SATs.

The car dying on the way home from the hospital.
The sinus infection the day of my West Side Story audition.

It’s like life leans in, cracks its knuckles, and says,

“You want this next version of yourself? We'll just… see about that.”

 

Because the true test is not whether or not you can survive the chaos, but whether or not you can you remain yourself inside the inevitable chaos. 

 

Can you still show up?

Can you still do the work?
Can you still breathe, and pivot, and not light your entire life on fire because one thing went wrong? 

(or twelve things went wrong)? Somewhere between the traffic stop, the hormonal spiral, the computer funeral, and the deeply surreal experience of standing next to David Henry Hwang while trying not to dissociate, I realized I wasn’t falling apart. I was expanding. I guess... it just feels identical sometimes.

 

Because, dear reader, growth is not cute!

Growth is not a soft-focus Instagram reel with a voiceover about “stepping into your power.”

Growth is ugly-crying in a borrowed car while calculating interest rates.
Growth is showing up to rehearsal anyway.
Growth is letting yourself be seen before you feel ready.

Growth is saying, I am terrified, but I am not leaving.

 

There’s a psychological term for this —anti-fragile. 

 

When Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term anti-fragility, he was trying to name something that didn’t exist in our literal or psychological vocabulary. We have words for things that break under pressure ("fragile, breakable"—think of a wine glass shattering), and we have words for things that hold steady or bounce back ("robust, sturdy, steadfast,"—think of a levy or damn during a hurricane).  But what Taleb realized what that we did not have a word for systems that actually improve when they’re exposed to adversity, stress, pressure, or volatility.

 

Taleb describes this as a gap in the language with real consequences. 

Fragile clearly means something that’s harmed by shocks. 

Robust describes something that resists them. 

Resilient covers systems that can recover after being knocked down. 

 

But in all three cases, the best possible outcome is staying the same.

 

The central premise of an anti-fragile system is that it doesn’t merely survive difficulty. It actually improves, and becomes better because of it. It refers to systems that strengthen under pressure. A useful way to picture the distinction is as a simple triad:

 

Fragile: weakened or damaged by adversity.

Robust / resilient: able to withstand adversity or return to baseline, but unchanged by it.

Anti-fragile: made stronger by adversity.

Strengthened by the adversity.
Sharpened by the friction.

 

The exact opposite of the part of me that wanted to run.

 

*

 

So yes. Wow. I am in Los Angeles, living my dream.

 

And I am also crying in parking lots, buying emergency laptops, bleeding on schedule, and learning in real time how to stay present in the life I worked so hard to build.

 

Which feels about right.

 

Because maybe the "level up" isn’t the success at all. Maybe the level up is the ability to withstand all the good bad joyful heinous and identity-melting things that come with "success," and not talk yourself out of it.

Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be at the Pasadena Playhouse, trying to act like a person who belongs there, while also? Quietly becoming one...

Internal monologue: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"Our Town, Our Table" - A Workshop

Never have I ever worked on a piece like this. In development for nearly 18 months, I am the "last-man-standing" from the earliest days of sitting around a table with a very silly idea, and this week, 11 actors we've collected along the way have poured their hearts, battle scars, war stories, tales of love and humor and loss, in to this beautiful new American play, Our Town, Our Table by Kirsten Gunther, conceived with Jack Cummings of the Transport Group. 

 

It has been one of the greatest collaborative experiences of my life. The stories, the humanity, the problem solving, the laughter, the tears. An inexplicable bond formed across time and shared in a sparse space equipped with nothing but our words, memories, imaginations, and 11 humble props. 

 

To speak of the content of this project would be to pepper it with spoilers, but suffice it to say it it "about" Thornton Wilder's Our Town, but about so much more. What we sacrifice for a life in the theatre. Who we met along the way. What is replaceable. What is ephemeral. What is eternal. And how to savor and cherish "every every minute" on stage and on earth. 

 

Here's to the world seeing it manifest.  

 

The Bywater Scissors

     At the end of 2024, I was cooked. Fully crispy, charred artist-on-a-spit. Four major surgeries in four years, disillusioned, gaslit by the career I thought I loved, ghosted by people I used to admire, and filled with a creeping sense that I was the punchline to a cosmic joke called Show Business. I couldn’t even walk IN to a theatre, I couldn’t watch TV or movies, listen to music, or look at a stage without feeling totally nauseated.

Like I’d let down the ghost of my teenage self 

     and every hope of my long dead father 

          like I was in my own little Euripides play 

I joke now, but months ago? I was all dactylic hexameter and up-at-night, inter-generational questioning. 

My inner monologue had devolved into: “Why are you doing this to yourself?” 

 

I was staring into the void of my creative life and wondering if there was anything left to revive—ready to quit The Showbiz move to a small town and open a candle store called something tragic like Cutting Room Floor or Final Act (or something) and never speak of “the industry” again.

 

So when 2025 began, I made a very quiet, barely-uttered promise to myself: no more striving. No more hustling. No more saying ‘yes’ to things out of panic. Every project I took on needed to meet one simple criterion: it had to be nourishing. Not career-advancing, not résumé-polishing—but quite literally nourishing. Nothing I took on could be to impress anyone, gain me clout, or “advance my brand” (please stab me)— all it had to do was very simply make me feel vaguely human again. 

 

The rule was simple: if it didn’t nourish, it didn’t happen.

 

There comes a time in every working life when the great “why” that once powered you—the burning sense of purpose that made exhaustion seem noble—simply burns out. One day you wake up, and the thing that once filled you with wonder feels hollow. The rituals of your calling turn mechanical; the air goes out of the room. 

I think that’s the part no one warns you about: how meaning doesn’t vanish all at once, but by degrees. You bargain with it. You tell yourself the spark will return when the next job comes, or the next success, or when the world feels less cruel. When meaning leaves a person, it does not leave politely. It takes with it your sense of direction, your appetite for risk, even the reason to get out of bed in the morning. And when it finally does go quiet, the silence inside you is deafening. You start to wonder if you’ve been a fool to love something that can’t love you back.

But here is what I have learned in the slow rebuild: meaning is not an idea; it’s a practice. It returns not through revelation, but through repetition. Just like the art of theatre acting itself: the identical daily exericse. The play is not different, but the world is, and you are. And thus meaning sneaks back in during the work itself: line by line, scene by scene, hour by hour, shoulder to shoulder with other people who are also trying, also hoping, also just showing up. 

 

The doing becomes the proof. 

The companionship becomes the faith. 

 

And one day, almost without noticing, you feel the warmth again—the quiet understanding that purpose isn’t something you find, it’s something you make, together.

 

When Dial M for Murder at Drury Lane came along, I said ‘yes’ because my instincts told me it felt good. Not strategic, not glamorous—just good. I came back to Chicago—and found not only work, but warmth. 

First of all, Chicago is that girl. Warm, funny, affordable-ish, and full of theatre people who will drive you to Trader Joe’s when your loaner car craps out. I forgot how much history I had here. Colleagues. Friends. Kin. People who had called an ambulance, seen me single, sad, on morphine, knew every “bad side” and still answered my texts. I never like working far from home, but Chicago now feels like a second one, with (sorry, New York), superior hot dogs. 

And then there was the unexpected joy of finally sharing a contract with my high school friend of twenty-five years, Adam Immerwhar. Adam led with taste, humor, and (a helluva lot of) grace, and together we filled our utterly preposterous “digs” in the windowless attic of this actual theatre with something I think I remembered called joy. There were martinis. There was the wearing of costumes from the seemingly permanent “Christmas Carol” clothing rack, and as a result of all of this: THERE WERE BITS.

And my God, this cast. Unreal. Every single person was both a phenomenal actor and a functioning adult. One of the best companies of my career. 

We built our own little speakeasy backstage—a ramshackle bar affectionately named “The Bywater Scissors.” It became our gathering place, our late-night lounge, our hub of laughter, Erik-Hellman-prepared cocktails, and gentle mischief. 

 

Joy, shared. 
Exhaustion, witnessed. 
Kindness, on the rocks.

 

There was something sacred about it. 

 

This company has been a miracle of balance—funny, kind, honest, supportive; and all emotionally literate, have been around the block in The Showbiz, and all with a nice grasp on reality.  We managed to stumble into the anti–regional theatre cliché: no drama, no ego, no chaos. Just real grown-ups playing pretend together for a living fully committed to the backstage bar. 

 

Now, as the show closes and 2025 saunters to its end, I can say this: I’m not “fixed”—let’s not start that rumor—but I am better. 
 

It turns out, rehab doesn’t always happen in hospitals or cult-y Malibu retreats. Sometimes it happens at The Bywater Scissors, surrounded by people who remind you that there really IS still magic in the thing you loved when you were fifteen. 

Still here. 

Still showing up. 

Still loving a ridiculous, impossible art form that somehow refuses to let me go.

 

So, to the artists (Amanda, Erik, Ian, Jonathan et al) who maybe unknowingly helped me find my way back to wholeness—thank you.

 

And thank you, ‘The Theatre,’ for taking me back even after I ugly-cried and told everyone we were “on a break.”

 

There really are no people like show people.

“A Vision of Dame Barbara Hepworth Told Me to Dump My Girlfriend” - an AFOOT story

Once again, another AFOOT story. 

As part of the Edinburgh version of Whisper Walk from the "AFOOT" series, I give you one of the monologues/short stories I have composed for this deliciously Scottish incarnation (that we on the creative team refer to a "whispers.") 

From the press release:  

Confessional stories, unuttered truths and personal memories are whispered through headphones in a documentary-style walking tour through Edinburgh. Whisper Walk is partly inspired by the Japanese Kaze no Denwa (“wind phone”) and explores how memories are deeply connected to a seemingly ordinary place. Each audience member, equipped with their smartphone and a pair of headphones, is guided through Edinburgh as voices gently whisper stories and personal memories tied to the locations they pass. As participants become trusted confidants, they are invited to contribute their own place-related memory – whispered into a phone placed at the end of the Whisper Walk – to be archived in the ever-growing Whisper Museum.

Writer Alexandra Silber said, “Whisper Walk is, I think, a really beautiful and unique storytelling theatrical experience, under the notion that places hold memories. It explores the notion that our memories are tied heavily to place, and sort of revels in the idea that a seemingly ordinary, singular, flat park bench, a tree, a series of steps, a street corner, a churchyard, a pub, a very specific cross-section of longitude and latitude, can contain a multitude of stacked memories belonging to countless people—really holding these stories and memories from every human who ever crosses that location. This is very much the way we receive podcasts nowadays, and certainly builds upon the radio drama tradition, but the individual audience member, as a result of this, will end up in a specific geographical place and will hear a story about the place in which they are standing, and thus serves as a confessional, a confidant, a stranger on the road to whom the speaker of the story can speak more candidly than to a regular person in their everyday lives.” 

And so, with that. Enjoy this sneak peak and see you in Edinburgh, this August, afoot! 

 __________________________________________ 

If you ever date a sculptor know this: at some point, they’ll try to sculpt you. Emotionally, I mean. Mine, whose name was Lena had been trying to chisel the sensitivity out of me since March. I thought it was love. It was probably just…scheduling.

We were right here at Doctor’s Pub, and I had made the mistake of having a second Negroni. I remember this because I never order a second Negroni unless I’m trying to impress someone or totally self-destruct.
At some point, I stumbled to the loo—not to be ill, but to be alone without Lena describing “the essence of clay,” and maybe cry a little, the way one sometimes does at the Fringe.

And that’s when I saw her: 
Dame Barbara Hepworth— English sculptor who defined the essence of Modernism and by the way is dead—in the mirror. She wasn’t glowing or floating; malevolent or kind. Just… standing there. Stern. Severe. Iconic headscarf just-so. The kind of woman who looked like she once filed her taxes with a blowtorch.

     “You need to leave her,” the ghost of Barbara Hepworth said, really very composed for someone long-dead. 
I blinked. She raised an eyebrow. Was this low blood sugar? Divine intervention? All I knew is that the ghost of Barbara Hepworth had opinions, and honestly, she wasn’t wrong.
     “But she’s brilliant,” I said, out loud, to no one. “She has a residency in Berlin!”
Barbara Hepworth sighed.      

     “She put a plinth in your kitchen, darling. That’s not a woman, that’s an installation.” 

I returned to the table and stared at Lena, while she returned to describing the sensual nature of rebar. We settled up and left. But in my daze, I’d left my credit card behind and as I turned back— there was Barbara once again, her brilliant, ragged hands banging on the glass from inside the main window, mouthing            “Leave her!!’ 

Then she was gone. Just—poof. Back to the realm of dead British modernists and my own unfortunate subconscious.

 

And I thought: Barbara has a point! I don’t want to be part of someone else’s conceptual vision board— and what will I do for six months in Germany? I’m lactose intolerant. 
 

I broke up with Lena the next day. She said I was mediocre and afraid of commitment.
Which are both true.

But honestly?
Sometimes you just have to listen to the ghost of a modernist sculptor in a pub toilet.
Especially when she’s right.

The prophetic Dame.

Where the Rivers Meet

In January, I was convinced—for the twenty-sixth time in two years—that I was absolutely, for real, not-a-joke-this-time, quitting show business. All to say: jokes on me, I didn’t plan an extended stay in Red Bank, New Jersey to act in a play, which I believe the very definition of being in show business, at Two River Theater.

 

Let me be clear: I did not go to Red Bank, New Jersey, on any kind of overly earnest, self-healing pilgrimage. I went because I was having a Category 5 Identity Crisis™ and accidentally drove past the exit to my therapist’s office, then kept going because I didn’t feel like crying in front of someone with a quartz paperweight and aggressively kind eyes.

 

So, there I was in Red Bank. It sounded fake. (Doesn't it sound fake?) Like a town from a children’s book where woodland creatures run a gift shop. But there it was. A real place with real rivers. Two, in fact. The Navesink and the Shrewsbury. I know this because I Googled it while eating a panic hot dog in the car on the way there, twenty hours after completing jury duty. 

 

Before I could take a Tums I found myself in the cutest little one bedroom you ever did see, situated along said rivers (a pro), nuzzled up to the industrial-sized garbage dump of the (quite fancy) retirement home next door (a significant con), and a hop-skip-and-a-jump from a tavern called The Molly Pitcher Inn (a hoot). 

 

Tatiana in tow, I took the job, we moved in, and the first night I cried. 

 

I've never been great at transitions, at change. A Cancerian through-and-through, I love my home, my nest, my comforts, and the first 72 hours in any new digs are always agony. I now know to just allow it to happen—the ploppy tears. I bring a few comforting things with me (and possibly get that 72 hours down to a respectable 48). It helps to ease me in to unfamiliar bed-sheets, cutlery, strange lighting and weird noises. A blanket from home. A heating pad. "Professor Owlinski" the stuffed owl I won in a poker game hosted by Tyne Daly sometime in the mid 20-teens... (and come to think of it, I brought these same three comforts to each of my surgeries in the hospital back in 2020-21. We've been through stuff...)

 

Human beings can adjust to a lot, but when time is of the essence, when you have to go to rehearsal and appear to be a functional person and work must get done? There is just something about one's stuff. Let's just say: after nearly 20 years in said-showbiz-I-have-yet-to-quit, I've learned how to "be on the road." 

 

But this time? I was coming out of a personal landslide. Though even that sounds too dramatic for what it actually was: a slow, silent erosion of meaning, purpose and the former pert-ness of my cheekbones. I was hollowed out. Still churning out one-liners like a pro! But hollow. 

 

This must be why stand-ups have drinking problems. I considered starting one, or nurturing another vice, or getting a 'shoulder crow,' but I was honestly too tired to really commit to becoming an "Interesting Town Character." 

 

You ever completely fall apart in such a boring, scenic place that your misery feels almost rude? That was me. Sitting by the water, feeling like an exposed nerve while a couple nearby named Gary and Lisa discussed crab cakes and laughed like no one had ever ghosted them on Instagram. I wanted to scream, HOW ARE YOU LAUGHING? THE WORLD IS MELTING! But I didn't. And meh. Gary and Lisa wouldn't have reacted if I had anyway. This was New Jersey, after all. These people have seen some shit.  

 

After the show finished in the evenings I would walk over from the theatre, snuggle up with Tati and watch true crime shows—heists, mostly. It felt as though I was achieving something: I was solving crimes. Good job, me. 

I read recently that people who watch true crime "to relax" have something deeply wrong with them and? Can confirm. 10/10 I am likely very unwell. At least I have been for the last year or so. 

Emotionally more mature, better regulation skills, perspective and capacity to navigate the world? Definitely. 

Size of the emotions? The same.  

 

Dammit.  

 

 

So fine: I had come undone, in a slow, creaky implosion! But bahahahahahahahaha my career was booming! I had worked 43 out of 52 weeks making art! Even some of it was great art! I had health insurance! A pay check worth tens of dollars! A literal financial plan! A cute haircut! Subscriptions to things! 

 

But my sense of purpose was... missing, presumed dead and starring at me sadly from the back of a 1980s milk carton. I had reached that particularly dramatic point in a downward spiral where you start listening to Lana Del Rey on purpose. I kept whispering, "What is the point of anything?" like I was a sad Victorian boy with scarlet fever. And in one particularly preposterous moment I stared at my fingernails about to paint them before I quietly muttered "....why?" (Alec can attest to this, he bore witness. We laughed. But for a few seconds it was bleak). 

But Red Bank just—let me be. No one in this town tried to fix me. The ducks ignored me. The barista slid me a free kitchen sink bar muffin without asking if I was okay. Even the rivers weren’t trying to teach me a lesson. They were just doing their thing, converging in the background like, “Hey, we’ve been here for 10,000 years and we didn’t figure our lives out either.”

 

One afternoon, I watched a seagull eat half a bagel off a park bench with such pride I almost cried. I thought: Maybe I could do that. Not eat bagels off benches, necessarily, ya know: snatch at life. Find something small and beautiful and eat it like it was a feast. And also? rude that this is a seagull which is very theatre-coded and I get the message Universe, I am tryyyyying to get a grip over here. 

 

But I didn’t. I just sat there in sweatpants I definitely should have retired three emotional breakdowns ago, and I watched the seagull do its thing, water swirl in that calm, competent way only water can. Not trying to be inspiring, just being very busy and wet. 

In the end?

Red Bank didn't fix me. There was no lightning bolt of revelation, no cathartic sob on a riverside bench. 

 

But something shifted. My thoughts softened. My hands unclenched. I stopped needing to name every pain, stopped auditing my life like a failing business. I didn’t throw my phone into the river (or the other river), or sell all my belongings and open a paint-your-own-pottery studio (a foolish idea anyway because there already is one called ' Time to Kiln' and it's adorable).  I just... felt a little better. Like maybe I didn’t need to know what comes next to just exist.

 

Eventually I left, of course. You can’t hide in New Jersey forever. (Or maybe you can, I don't know your life.) But something stayed with me. A sense that even when everything feels like it’s falling apart, it’s still okay to eat fried clams, talk out loud to ducks, and let two unbothered rivers remind you that the world keeps flowing, whether you’re thriving or just trying really hard not to cry in public. 

 

I didn’t get all the answers. But I did get a seder plate I painted myself at 'A Time to Kiln,' and to my great relief: a couple of weeks of peace. 

 

I’ll take it.

The Dressing Room Project: ¡VOS!

The Dressing Room Project is the brain child of Michael Kushner (my friend and fave photographer of my face), where he takes his camera, his discerning eye, his incredible person-ability to bring the best out of actors preparing to go onstage, all married with his unparalleled taste to bring you images unlike any other. Actors preparing. Actors before the world sees them. Intimate, Engaging. 

 Michael was generous enough to come out to Two River Theater to photograph Christina and I before VOS, and how lucky we were and are. Enjoy. 

©Michael Kushner

 

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

¡VOS! – a world premiere

@tcharleserickson

Opening Night of the world premiere of ¡VOS! at Two River Theatre.

 

All hail this female TRIUMPH of a play. This glorious, funny, warm, loving, moving, beautiful story full of history and heart. It has been an honor to be a part of the BIRTH of this piece, create these characters alongside the brilliant actor/playwright Christina Pumariega and with the peerless leadership of Nicole A Watson. 

 

What a rehearsal room (of all women— including our glorious SM team, dramaturg and AD!) This also marks my first theatre contract as a Latina actor (this one is for you Noriega family—finally!), my 7th world premiere, and marks my 20th year in the professional theatre. 

 

I’m so proud to be a part of this show I could burst.

 

As Dr. Cossí says: “Okay we done!” 

 

Let’s party.

photo by @motendesigns (also our phenomenal scenic designer)

A play is nothing without the team that makes it. It takes a village. 

That village is:

Playwright: Christina Pumariega

Director: Nicole A. Watson

Scenic Designer: Lawrence E. Moten III Costume
Designer: Raquel Barreto
Lighting Designer: Carolina Ortiz Herrera Sound
Designer: Sinan Refik Zafar
Projection Designer: Kelly Colburn
Dramaturg: Sarah Rose Leonard
Dialects: Rosie Berrido
Intimacy Coordinator: Alex Might
Production Stage Manager: Jynelly Rosario
Rehearsal Assistant Stage Manager: Gracie
Carleton
Assistant Stage Manager: Abigail Medrano
Casting: Caparelliotis Casting and Joseph Gery
Assistant Director: Jessi Stier
Associate Scenic Designer: Danielle Delafuente
Assistant Lighting Designer: Hayley Garcia Parnell
Hair and Makeup Consultant: Carissa Thorlakson
Projections Consultant: Dylan Uremovich

 

@tcharleserickson

@tcharleserickson

 

@tcharleserickson

@tcharleserickson