And WOW!! I just wrote almost this whole blog and forgot to save it again after the first paragraph. Usually it stays up but i just left it for a minute and for some reason when I came back everything had deleted except for the first paragraph. So I will be giving a very brief summary of the last couple days of what I had originally written about very thoroughly and had even added a few humorous anecdotes. Sorry about that, folks.
OKAY so the main reason for the title is that I did work more than usual this week--I worked Sunday night and then had my third and final day of training at Barking Dog on Wednesday night--yikes! After shadowing one of the waitresses of the waitresses, my boss made us switch so that I was doing the waiting and the other waitress followed me around for guidance. I'm nervous because, well, let's just say I made a few mistakes, and my first day of serving on my own is tomorrow night! Gahh! Wish me luck--I'll need it!
On Monday I met up with my friend Carly from California again as well as our friend Madhura from Jersey, whose parents also went to college with our parents. We ate lunch at Brasserie Athenee, one of my favorite restaurants located on 46th & 8th. I recommend the Croque Madame. We walked around Times Square for a while and then we met Madhura's mom for dinner. It was great catching up with them! After dinner, I had an audition for an NYU student film. It went fine but I didn't get a callback. Oh well, it's just good to go on as many auditions as possible for the experience.
OKAY so here's where I left off before my blog deleted. On Tuesday I had my two acting classes. In my morning class we learned about externalism, which is the process of embodying certain animals or objects in order to access different points of view. For instance, my teacher gave the example of when he had to play an abusive man who views women merely as meat, which is the complete opposite of him in real life. In order to start seeing the world in that way, he chose to work for the point of view of a cheetah, who views everything as meat. To externalize an animal, you must start out on all fours as the animal and then slowly humanize it so that you end up walking like a human but with similar characteristics to the animal. You try to think like the animal. It might sound silly, but it really helped me. We also learned about embodying other humans that had similar characteristics to what the character you are playing might have. Our teacher made us go outside and find someone to
embody that we thought could be similar to our characters in our monologues. I started following this one girl who seemed perfect, only to see her walk into the stage door of Spiderman The Musical. That was a neat experience--figures I would end up following a broadway actress!
Since my night class is in the same area as my morning class, I usually stay in midtown for the four hours in between my two classes. However, this week I was too exhausted and just wanted to curl up and watch a movie, so I decided to go back to my apt on the Upper East Side for a couple hours in between my two classes. On the subway ride I saw a woman reading a novel called "MORE Drama in Church." The word 'More' was bolded as if it were a sequel to the book "Drama in Church." The woman reading it seemed very enthralled. I found that sight quite funny.
On Thursday I worked a bit with my other job, which I don't think I've told you guys about. I sell tickets to broadway and off-broadway shows in Times Square--yep, it's exactly what you're thinking. However, my company is much classier than the companies selling comedy tickets. We work for the producer of the current production Godspell on Broadway, selling discounted tickets to Godspell as well as a few off-broadway shows. This job is how i got free tickets to see Avenue Q last week. All the people who I've met who work for this company are fairly normal and attractive and not sketchy at all. However, because people who sell things in Times Square often get a bad rep, this job is not exactly the easiest thing I've ever done. I usually dread going out to do it until I sell some tickets, after which I start to think, "hey, this ain't so bad!" I've only gone out three times and the most I had sold before yesterday was three tickets in 2.5 hours, which isn't too bad. However, yesterday after about 40 minutes I sold SIX tickets, and all to the show that is hardest to sell tickets for! That means I made $48 bucks in an hour. You can call this job anything you want, but how many college students are able to say they can make $48 in an hour? Not too many! Even though this job can be stressful (thats an understatement) sometimes, I'm really learning a lot about sales--and I think this is one of the hardest sales jobs out there.
Side note--on the subway ride to work on Thursday we had some momentary subway troubles, which means we heard at least one play of the pre-recorded voice saying something along the lines of: "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are being held momentarily due to the train's dispatcher." After the recording stopped, the little boy next to me exclaimed, "That sounds like the same guy that said it the last time." His mom laughed and explained to him that it is a pre-recorded voice--There isn't a guy sitting there 24/7 waiting for his moment to explain each and every subway's dispatcher. Kids say the darnedest things, right?
On Thursday night I went to see Godspell (fo free!) with one of my roommates. It was GREAT and It was in the round, which was an interesting new experience. Every actor was very impressive in their acting as well as in their singing skills, and I can be pretty critical of broadway actors. Corbin Bleu played Jesus, and he was actually really good! The show is closing on Sunday, so I strongly recommend any New Yorkers reading this to go see it before it closes. There is this webseries I watch called "Submissions Only" about the funny experiences of NY actors, and during intermission we walked out to the lobby and I happened to one of the actors from the series!! I approached her and we started talking and she was very nice. I told her that I had been wanting to get involved with the series as a production assistant but that no one had responded to my email. She told me to friend her on facebook and that she would pass on my info! Wahoo! That was pretty darn exciting.
Right now I just got back from my friend from school's house in Park Slope and I am about to relax a bit before I have to go to work at Barking Dog at 6:00--eek! Wish me luck!!
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