The drawer in my nightstand doesn’t close properly. This is because it is full of notebooks. Not one notebook, not a curated set of three, but roughly eleven half-used Moleskines, four drugstore composition books, two unlined sketchpads I bought during a burst of artistic confidence I can no longer locate, and a promotional notebook from …
Making a home in New York City is a lot like keeping a show running on a frayed Equity contract: the moment you think you’ve got your footing, someone changes the blocking. The bodega that knew your coffee order becomes a bank. Your rent-stabilized walk-up gets a “luxury” lobby and a new name. The subway …
There is a particular kind of New York City morning that smells like wet cardboard and opportunity. I am standing in my kitchen, which is also my living room, which is also, on certain desperate days, my rehearsal studio. I am between gigs. Again. And I am trying to remember if I am a person …
It’s 11:47 PM on a Sunday and I’m staring at a Submittable form for the New York International Fringe Festival. The form wants: project title, one-line description, two-paragraph synopsis, and $35. Deadline: midnight. I have the synopsis. I have the $35, technically, if you don’t count the $40 I owe the bodega for the tab …
The Panic of the Open Calendar Day four of unemployment hits with a very specific kind of dread. The early bliss—sleeping past noon, shuffling around in the same pajama pants I wore in Gypsy at the Straw Hat in Poughkeepsie—curdles fast. A calendar that used to be a jigsaw of audition slots, callback times, and …