VERY brief update!

Hi folks!

I don't have much time to tell you what's going on, but I thought I'd send you a few sentences about life in rehearsals. I also don't have my camera cable with me, so no photos - sorry!

I just completed my second week of rehearsals, and came home to Essen to spend the weekend with Sidonie! Our tour group is doing three shows: two original pieces for children (Weasel in the Sack, and Future Perfect) and The Glass Menagerie for young adults. In Weasel, I play one of two evil brothers to the main character. My character, Marmaduke, is a fat glutton who is selfish and prideful. It's a fun show with a fairy tale feel. We climb a mountain, cross a river, fight a dragon and find out that our Cinderella-esque sister is really a princess!

In Future Perfect, I play the lead character, a boy that we see grow from 13 to 22 (both ages that are clearly still in my playing range - right? ;) Jimmy Doramus (my character) doesn't like school, so he doesn't apply himself and doesn't do very well. He tries to find work after graduation, but ends up in the packing department for a toy company: not something he anticipated. In the end, he is discovered by a movie producer, and becomes a big rap sensation (that's right, folks, I rap throughout this piece!) The moral of this story is that while Jimmy made it big without applying himself, this type of success is not common.

In Menagerie I play Tom (for those who don't know the show, that's the narrator and male lead.) This is a role I've always wanted to play, and I'm having such fun rehearsing for it! We've set the play in its original St Louis (accents and all!) This is worth mentioning because both of the women on my tour are Scottish! They're doing quite a nice job adapting to not only a foreign accent, but a dialect of a foreign accent! The other guy on tour is also American (he's from Upstate NY.) We tech on Tuesday and have an invite dress the following day! We're all looking forward to that! We have our first public performance on the 27th of October, and we'll be performing Menagerie twice that day, once in the morning and once in the evening (a rare occurrence as most of our performances are before noon!) We perform in middle and upper level schools and typically perform between one and three shows (in any arrangement) each day. We stay in one place for at least a week (sometimes up to a month.) We're usually done with work by early afternoon each day and are free until our performance the next day. We have Saturdays and Sundays off (but we often travel to a new location on Friday evenings.) We also have nearly three weeks paid leave for Christmas and about two weeks paid leave for Easter.

Our tour is for the NW portion of Germany. We'll be staying in this area for most of the 9 month contract, but we'll also be going up to Denmark, and will be performing in N German cities like Hamburg and Flensburg. My cast mates are happy that I've lived in Deutschland for a year, so that I can help when we encounter folks who don't speak English! (The other two tours are made up of actors from Australia, America, England, Scottland, and Ireland, and none of the others speak German.)

Well, I'd better get back to life here - I've got to get things ready to head back to Soest for more rehearsals tomorrow!

Love and hugs to all! Don't forget to let me know what's up on your side of the globe :D

Changes...

Howdy folks! So, I promised to let you know what came of the auditions, and here it is :).

Drumroll, please...

I have a job! Wahoo! This has been quite a journey here in Essen. We've been here a little more than seven weeks, and I've been looking for a job since then! We really didn't want to just take any old job, but we wanted to hold out for one that I would actually enjoy. Our waiting has paid off.

I had two auditions in the past couple weeks, the one with the dinner theatre I mentioned and one with the theatre that wanted me to audition for The Glass Menagerie a few weeks ago. I know, strange story gets longer! The brief version - the rehearsals for this job began a week ago. However, the guy that they had cast in the position they originally wanted me to audition for decided one week into the rehearsal process that he didn't like the job, and he went home. I got a call yesterday from one of the two theatre directors who told me the above information and asked me to come audition (their rehearsal space is about an hour away from Essen in Soest.)

The skinny is: I have booked a British Equity educational English language theatre year-long contract. I will be playing Tom in The Glass Menagerie, and two other roles in two other shows. The other shows are original works/adaptations, and one is an ensemble piece, and I'll play the lead in the other. There are four of us who will play all the roles in the three shows (two guys - both American, and two girls - both Scottish.) We will be touring around Germany and Denmark (mostly in NRW: the German state that we live in.) The great thing about that is that I'll be able to come home to Sidonie in Essen almost EVERY WEEKEND!

Because the group is a week into the four week rehearsal process, I've got quite a job ahead of me! I'll begin at 9 AM on Monday, yes, that means three days from now! Needless to say, we've got quite a lot to do here this weekend!

Well, I'll keep this short, so I won't give all the details of the audition here, but if you want to know them, just send me an email or leave a comment.