Latest Film Work (Part II), 11/8

So if you're ready to have a love-fest with my work right after seeing my short play "Missed" at the Bleecker Street Theater on 11/7, come on out to see me in socially awkward porn.

Yeah ... it's exactly what it sounds like.

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Indecent Exposure Productions presents

A Shlong Awkward Pause

Millenium Film Theater

Sunday November 8th, 2009

3:30pm -4:30pm

66 e. 4th Street
Suggestion Donation - $10

30 minutes of Sex Farces...what more could you want?

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For $10? Yeah, 30 minutes sounds about right.

Latest Film Work (Part I), 10/31 and 11/1

Missed me as the Devil in Timor Mortis this past February? You're in luck -- I play a devilish character again in Jessica McVea's THE PROCEDURE, screening as part of the SINISTER SIX MUST BE DESTROYED film series on October 31 and November 1. It's on, y'all. Details below.

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SINISTER SIX MUST BE DESTROYED is the fourth and final installment in the annual horror anthology film series, THE SINISTER SIX, created and curated by Bryan Enk of Third Lows Productions. In celebration of the final year of the series, SINISTER SIX MUST BE DESTROYED pulls out all the stops as a "double-feature" horror anthology film, featuring TWELVE short horror films by TWELVE directors! Come celebrate Halloween with The Sinister Six... times two!

Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 8:15PM
Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 5:15PM

Millennium Film Workshop
66 E. 4th St.
New York, NY 10003
$10
Running Time: Approx. 2 hours

WARNING: Films contain strong horror violence and gore, disturbing images, graphic sexual content, nudity and strong language.


SINISTER SIX MUST BE DESTROYED includes:

THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANIMALS | Aaron Baker
When Egyptologists Max and Lily reunite to uncover the secrets of the ancient Book of Thoth, it could lead to ultimate power. Or possibly death.

MONDAY | Danny Bowes
A young woman is pursued by a vicious killer... from inside her own mind.

HOUSE GUESTS | Rebecca Comtois
Four friends take advantage of a cousin's summer house. They better remember to lock the front door.

CONTACT | Jeremiah Kipp
If there is doubt, then there is no love - and Koreen tests her fear of love's deep scars.

ARACATTACK! | Douglas MacKrell
Ace exterminator Deuce Johnson has been hired to take care of a spider infestation at a residential laboratory, only to discover a deadly truth so terrifying, only screams can describe it! Presented in EMERGE-O-VISION!

THE PROCEDURE | Jessica McVea
When an innocent girl signs up for a clinical trial sponsored by the sinister Lucigenics Pharmaceuticals Corporation, can she escape the horrific effects that befall her fellow participants?

AVENUE A | Mateo Moreno
"Join us tonight as we take you inside the East Village bar that was the site of the grisly 'Avenue A Murders.' And for the first time, see the footage that was found there, documenting the entire event..."

LEVITICUS 26 | Roger Nasser
Leviticus Daniels was a good boy... until his mother Ruth showed him the path to Righteousness.

evermore | Patrick Shearer
How much is too much?

BLUEBERRY | Art Wallace
The director of "The Haunted Ghost" and "When Darkness Comes" returns with another tale of existential dread as a psychotic birthday party goes bad, very bad...

And some sinister surprises!

http://www.thirdlows.com/sinistersixmustbedestroyed/

pigeonholing the penis-less (part II)

the first of our responses to an earlier question I posed: in auditions, are female performers forced to make a choice between being pretty or funny? our first (anonymous) correspondent:

I can't really speak to "pretty vs. funny" but I do think there's a serious dichotomy present with any combination of qualities that creates three-dimensional women, i.e. "pretty & intelligent" or "pretty & strong" or "sympathetic & strong." And I think it is well worth mentioning that this exists as a problem not just for actresses - this exists for ALL women whatever their profession - it just may be brought into more frequent and higher visibility in the acting world. Maybe I'm just stereotyping the stereotypes, but QUICK! name a character in film or television that fits any of those categories. Now switch any single word in any pair to its opposite (pretty & ditzy/ugly & intelligent, pretty & weak/ugly & strong, harsh & strong, sympathetic & weak): I'll bet you'll find it a LOT easier to think of examples for those pairings. (And while you're at it, don't stop at Hollywood - literature is full of this, too - Hollywood didn't invent it - they just PERFECTED it.)

I take it back: I will speak to "pretty vs. funny:" If you look at funny as being laughable (as in laugh AT), then there's plenty of that out there (see "pretty & ditzy"). But IMHO, true humor (laugh WITH) requires wit and intelligence, which would be a subset of "pretty & intelligent" - so you see where that leaves us...

Having recently dyed my hair for a role (I'm a natural blonde who went brown), my life INSTANTLY changed. I was walking the same route every day, wearing the same clothes... the only thing that was different was my hair color. The daily commentary from the construction site near my work CEASED - and I mean ENTIRELY. I was invisible (thank goodness - it's enough to make me think about not going back). Women were nicer, whether it was standing on the train platform or shopping in a crowded environment. So again, it's not just Hollywood, either - but then I think the argument can be made that we've all been CONDITIONED by Hollywood to one degree or another...

I have literally been told during my career that I read "too smart" to play a bimbo (although being blonde and curvy, those were largely the roles that I was sent up for and occasionally cast in - that is, back when I was young enough even to be considered for the bimbo). You may OCCASIONALLY find a smart, blonde character in film or TV, but I can practically guarantee that you won't find a smart, blonde, curvy girl - she'll be stick-thin.

Finally in response to the "over 35" thing - Burson's statement is a fallacy from the start. In Hollywood terms, there IS NO SUCH THING as a woman who is considered both "beautiful" and "over 35" unless she became a star in her 20s (or maybe even earlier) and is managing to continue to NOT LOOK HER AGE. Conventional wisdom has it that if you don't make it there in your 20s, you're not going to make it (yes, I'm sure people can provide a few exceptions, but they will be FEW). So Hollywood, worshipping youth and beauty (or the surgical representations of it), has essentially destroyed their older base by drumming them out of the industry, and if they genuinely want it back they're going to have to do a bit of work. They're also going to need to shift their definition of beauty, which is basically to be without facial texture or any meat on your bones. Most women by their mid-30s have figured out that some battles are just not worth fighting, and trying to stay Hollywood-thin will RAVAGE a woman's face, not to mention her health. I'm sure that there are PLENTY of "talented, funny women over 35" out there - maybe even plenty that many of us would consider beautiful - they just may not be "Hollywood" beautiful.

what's really on the market

Over at Unscripted, Sharina Martin celebrates landing a film contract:

this is the first film endeavor I am actually getting paid for. I feel as though I'm popping some sort of acting cherry. My work is valuable enough to be treated as a commodity by people. I'm moving on up!

First of all, congrats! But the point is that (like I said earlier today) as a performer, your "work" is not the commodity -- you are. I don't think that's a good or bad thing in and of itself -- it's what you do with that fact that matters.

More commodified actresses in the days to come...

pigeonholing the penis-less (part I)

A very unscientific poll of New York City actresses follows.

Here's how it got started. The Times had a profile of Anne Heche where the co-creator of the new series Hung, Colette Burson, said "It is incredibly difficult to find beautiful, talented, funny women over 35."

Then, Jezebel covered her digging-ever-deeper retraction here, where Anna North wrote:

Maybe it wouldn't be "hard to find pretty and funny" if actresses weren't pigeonholed as one or the other, or if we thought of humor as sexy in women the way we do in men. Of course, it's not Burson's fault that Hollywood deals in simplistic gender stereotypes. But as someone who says "I feel so passionately about the issue" of creating compelling female characters over 35, she could certainly challenge these stereotypes a bit more.

So we asked come actresses we know about it. Have they experienced this kind of either/or dichotomy -- expected to be pretty OR funny, but never both? How pigeonholed are you in auditions these days by your looks/age/ethnicity/possession of a brain?

These were loaded questions, since it's a given that theater, once mixed with business, is a narrow-minded enterprise. Commercial success is the surest way to kill originality, since the audience you're attracting -- at least, when you know you're going to lose money -- is quite different than the one you're trying to entice to spend perhaps hundreds of dollars on a ticket. [Thanks, Showcase Code!]

How does one tempt a better-heeled audience? With a tacit promise that the stories will be linear, the tension resolved, and the faces pretty. (And how exactly does one determine what constitutes pretty? Glad you asked -- those faces are largely white. But race politics are already overplayed around here, so I'm staying the hell away from that for now.)

Somewhat paradoxically, pretty is also neutered; threatening beauty is not comforting to an audience, and to it's placed in a separate category -- les femmes fatales, if you will. Comedy, on the other hand, is almost always at its best when it's subversive. Family friendly comedy is usually marked by its willingness to meet expectations and not surprise. Granted, there's nothing particularly witty about dropping the f-bomb over and over again, but there's definitely nothing funny about Reba.

This is chronicled much better elsewhere, but to be a funny woman is doubly subversive. But remember, the more money you ask of a theater audience, the less flexible they are: there's a direct correlation between money spent and ego they expect to be stroked. You can't abuse their preconceptions, you need to one extent or another, to reinforce them. You can imagine what happens to actresses (already subdivided by color, waist size, height, etc.) when they are doomed with having personality as well.

Having jumped late onto the Mad Men bandwagon, there are plenty of chauvinistic exchanges that are simply cringe-worthy to the contemporary ear as I catch up on past episodes: it's a sexism that's shocking (to us) in its condescendingly casual tone as much as its actual content. It's hard to believe that the objectification of woman was a cultural norm so recently...

...at least, it's hard to believe for the five minutes it takes to find this. Or this. Or this.

So how unrecognizable are the new prejudices? I guess as sensitive as your ears are. Or until a Boston police officer calls Henry Louis Gates a jungle monkey in an email.

(But before we turn this into an all-people-with-power-are-evil rant, there's something worth thinking about here when you're a performer on the other side of the audition table as well: when you're acting, your job isn't to change the world, it's to convey a client's story to a consumer. The lines are clearer when you're auditioning for a commercial, less so when you're doing a straight play. The fundamentals are the same, but this time around the product is you.)

So that's the question. The first of their answers next week.

audition horror stories (part one)

Theater production is a painful pursuit: there's no money in it, little recognition, and really just one seemingly insurmountable humiliating obstacle after another. It's especially no fun if you can't laugh at it. So we asked some of our friends to provide some audition tales. Bad auditions. Wallpaper-peeling bad. Here's the first. (Our correspondent has asked to remain anonymous.)

I had agents. Agents are supposed to be a good thing. And I think for the most part, they are. But their judgment is just as likely to be off as anyone else's, and that's why I have this nightmare audition story.

I had recently played Essie in YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. For anyone who doesn't know the play, Essie fancies herself an undiscovered prima ballerina, and has been taking lessons for years, and spends almost the entire show dancing (really badly) around the stage. According to her own dancing teacher, "...she STINKS." So theoretically you DON'T have to be good, or even knowledgeable, about dancing to play this role (although Ann Miller played her in the movie). I have a little bit of knowledge and experience, but I would NEVER at any point in my life have presented myself as a legitimate "en pointe" ballet dancer.

God bless my (former) agents (the agency is now long since disbanded) - they decided, based on my having done Essie, to send me up for ANOTHER show where "an actress who could dance" was wanted - please bring toe shoes. So I went, toe shoes in hand, to find that what they really wanted was a versatile actress for multiple roles which would require being creative with movement and not uncomfortable in toe shoes. I got the part. In all honesty, I shouldn't have, but I did. (This is not the nightmare story - but here it comes.)

So my lovely, well-meaning agents, bolstered by my undeserved success (and, I suppose, thinking that my hesitancy to audition for that role to begin with was false modesty), arranged for me to return from that role to an audition for THE RED SHOES... yes, the Broadway musical that died HARD: 51 previews and 5 performances.

According to the breakdowns, they wanted a true triple-threat. It was THE RED SHOES, so true ballerinas were required. It was a musical, so serious pipes were required. Acting was definitely going to be involved, but it was unquestionably third priority. So really, they wanted a "ballerina-singer who could act." I, on the other hand, did (and do) classify myself as an "actress who can sing and dance." I had that discussion with my agents - more than once. They were CONVINCED that I could do this. And in spite of my DEEP protestations, they somehow convinced me that I should at least give it a shot.

Oh, dear.

Well, I wasn't TOTALLY unprepared. One of my fellow actors was a choreographer, and knew that my skills were very limited, and graciously agreed to choreograph a two-minute piece for me. He also coached me as best he could - BP, wherever you are, you are a saint! - and so I wrapped up my contract and headed back to NYC for an audition I KNEW I had no business going to. But then, I'd had no business, really, going to the one before, and I'd gotten cast in that one, so... why not?

Against my better judgment, I showed up to the audition. At least I had the right clothes on - dance clothes. But I knew INSTANTLY that I was way, WAY out of my element. First of all, I wasn't overweight by any means - not even by actress standards - but by ballet standards? Well, I was probably twice the size of every other girl there. Food hadn't passed the lips of any of those girls in years (unless it was on a roundtrip ticket). And I was watching them all warm up and mark through their steps - as easily as breathing. Every single one of them was a REAL ballerina, from ABT, or NYCB, or the Joffrey (I heard them all talking). There weren't ANY other "actresses who dance" there. I wanted to turn and run. And I should have. But I thought that would make me look bad (to my agents), so I decided to stick it out... but with candor.

My name was called, and I entered the room. The auditors were all sitting at the table, and I walked over to hand them my headshot and music, introduce myself... you know the drill. In the spirit of candor and full disclosure, I told them straight out, "Hey, here's the thing. I am NOT a dancer. I fake well, but I am NOT a dancer, and my agents INSISTED that I come so here I am. But I know you're all really busy, and that you have real dancers out there to see, so I'm happy just to say 'hi' and 'thanks' and let you get on with your day."

Alas. No. They were so sweet. So supportive. They asked if I had a piece (I did). They asked if I was prepared to do it (I was). They said they would like to see it (I still don't know why). And so began the LONGEST TWO MINUTES OF MY LIFE (and I have no doubt two of the longest minutes of theirs - for that day, at least). I have also have no doubt whatsoever that literally every single thing I did for those two minutes was a complete affront to the dancers/choreographers that were sitting at the table, and I was painfully conscious of that for every microsecond of each of those 120 seconds (but, hey - who was counting?).

When I finished, the room was utterly silent... until I began laughing. They were all trying so hard to be kind, but they finally gave in and started laughing, too. And although the audition itself was a nightmare, it DID end well. As I went to collect my music, they all stood up (still laughing) and shook my hand, thanked me for coming in, told me I had "HUGE chutzpah" (and yes, that's an exact quote), and by golly if there was a role that didn't require dancing they'd call me back. I thanked them for their generosity and sense of humor and said that I wouldn't hold my breath, but that I appreciated the thought and wished them the best of luck in their search. (And never, NEVER again after that accepted an audition that I didn't think I belonged at.)