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 …
I used to think routine was the enemy. It was for accountants, for people with dental plans, for the kind of actor who books a three-year contract on a procedural and buys a condo in Weehawken. Not for me. I was a creative. I needed chaos, last-minute auditions, the electric panic of learning sides on …
It is 11 PM on a Tuesday, and I am sitting on the floor of my apartment in Washington Heights with a script in my lap that is not mine. I am learning lines for someone else’s play—a production I am grateful to be in, a job I auditioned for and wanted and got, and …
I used to think routine was the enemy. A slow, gray tide that washed away the spark. I was a waitress at a Times Square theme restaurant where I had to wear a wench costume and sing “Happy Birthday” to tourists from Ohio. My creative life was a series of panicked, 2 a.m. bursts before …