And this is only earth, my dear

In which our Diva pauses to remember

One hundred fifty years ago today, Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal Rossetti died of a laudanum overdose at the age of 32.

I had grand ambitions to finish writing Unvarnished, the one-woman show about her I first conceived nearly a decade ago, in time to be well on the way to production on this date, if not actually up and running. And, well, that hasn't happened for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that I'm both a busy actor and an unreliable writer. :-)

If finances and other obligations were kinder, I'd be in London right now, sharing the day with other admirers drawn by the memorial events scheduled at Highgate Cemetery with the participation of Jan Marsh and Lucinda Hawksley, two of the primary authors whose work has kept Lizzie's work and story alive in the public consciousness. I had the good fortune to meet the down-to-earth and gracious Lucinda for coffee on a whirlwind day in London last February. (So whirlwind, in fact, that I was appallingly late for our agreed-upon time, but she was very kind about it despite her own busy schedule).

Earlier that day, with just an hour or so to visit the Tate Britain, I made the decision to spend essentially all of that time in the "Key Works From the Historic Collection" room, whose far end is home to a concentration of the Pre-Raphaelite favorites that have accumulated on my bookshelf for two decades. After giving each painting a few minutes' close examination, and chatting for a few minutes with the lovely middle-aged lady who was kind enough to take a snapshot of me with Ophelia, I took a seat on a nearby bench and scribbled a dozen-plus journal pages of observations, not so much on the paintings themselves, but on the way people approached and interacted with them. And, of course, specifically with Ophelia, so famous, and such a magnet for adolescent girls in particular. I heard a pair of friends, perhaps twelve or thirteen, chattering their way down the long room behind me, grow hushed and suddenly serious as they approached.

It's a modestly-sized work, placed a bit to the side in the composition of a wall dominated by Burne-Jones' King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid, which I had somehow never processed was quite that enormous. But nobody misses it.

I sat there for about half an hour, and at one point my journal scribbling became a poem, something I've dabbled in but never been at all serious about. I don't know whether I'll end up using it somehow in Unvarnished. I don't really see how, as it doesn't mesh in style with Lizzie's own poetry, or that of her contemporaries, that I'm weaving into my text. So maybe here is where it belongs...

                               22 Feb 2011
                               Tate Britain

Like Snow White in her glass coffin
I am encased safely behind a pane
A window into our mad bewildering
                    idealistic youth

They walk past me, speaking in
                    reverent tones, as if in church
Or in a graveyard

This is more my monument than that
                   stone at Highgate, where I lie
Among those who share my name
                   by marriage
But who never quite wished
                   to share that name
                   with me.

There I am difficult to find, more
                  difficult to reach

You must know where to look
                  and whom to ask
                  and hope it is not one of
                  those who guard me so
                  closely from those who seek
                  me there

Here, behind the glass, my colours
                  are undimmed

My face as fresh as they told
                 Gabriel it was when they
                  brought me up from
                  the earth

A pretty lie to assuage his
                  guilt, his turmoil
                  at recovering that
                  which he should never have
                  given me at all
                  I had no need of them

On a dark night in Highgate
The tale of my uncorrupted state
                  was a lie

Here it is the truth.

What you seek is this
The girl in the water
She's easy to find
She hangs on the line
Wouldn't Mr Millais have
                   been pleased by that?

It's January, but no molasses here!

In which our Diva has a few irons in the fire

Who says things slow down in winter? Not the Chicagoland indie film community! Just updated my website with deets on upcoming projects, including The Dragon's Alley, a sci-fi webseries slated to premiere on February 9. Details are under pretty close wraps until then, but I can tell you I play an alien weapons expert named Tchind Vifge (say that ten times fast!), and I'm having a blast with its old-school Flash Gordon sort of vibe. I'm only in one scene in the first batch of five webisodes, but don't worry, there's more to come!

After that, I have three horror shorts of varying flavors lined up all in a row: Words Like Knives, Trapped, and The Hazed.

Plus, of course, still determined to finish writing Unvarnished, as well as regrouping a bit on the Chicago Resonance storyline. No rest for the wicked!

Upon reflection

In which our Diva has been missing the obvious

If you've been around this blog a while, you might remember me mentioning that the whole Lizzie Siddal thing started for me with her self-portrait. It's been a solid twenty years now, but I still vividly recall flipping through Jan Marsh's Pre-Raphaelite Women in the bookstore at Okemos Mall (a relatively convenient bus ride from my Michigan State dorm) and stopping short at this image with a near-physical shock of something very like recognition.

Over the years, I've pondered where that reaction came from. It's not that I actually think she looked that much like me (though it's also not hard to figure out how a pale, skinny, redheaded dreamer promptly developed an enduring fascination for her). It's the expression that reached out and grabbed me, eloquent of concentration and minute examination.

Lizzie painted herself... painting herself. Studying, perhaps even criticizing. Descriptions of the portrait -- just nine inches in diameter, and Lizzie's first and most successful known work in oil -- usually contrast its directness with the downcast gazes and romantic glamor of Rossetti's many portraits of her. It's part of the reason my work-in-progress finally acquired the title Unvarnished.

The easy conclusion to draw is that Rossetti (and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the other artists she sat for) projected a particular image onto her, and there's a lot to be said for that conclusion (hey, look, it's another Beatrice, and another, and Gabriel, honey, this is becoming an issue), but it doesn't necessarily follow that she painted The Truth in counterpoint to his romantic embellishment.

In fact, as occurred to me in a headsmacking moment the other day, it wasn't physically possible for her to do so. Which I knew, of course, but I hadn't quite thought through the implications this way before.

Like any self-portrait prior to the ascendance of photography (and, I expect, a good many even today), it's not a portrait of Lizzie as anyone else saw her. It's a portrait of her reflection. Which is not the same thing at all. But it's the reflection that spoke to me on that glossy page all those years ago. Sure, I could stare at Ophelia or Beata Beatrix all day, but that modest little circle still pins me like nothing else. I wonder if she ever held the portrait up to a mirror (as simulated here through the magic of Photoshop)? Did it shed any light on the connection between her "unvarnished" self and what others saw?

This train of thought brings to mind this blog post I read a year and a half ago, in which Cleolinda (who writes the sidesplittingly funny "Movies in Fifteen Minutes" recaps as well as the best good-natured skewering of Twilight you will ever encounter) states, quite clearly and cogently, what should be obvious but isn't necessarily, about what we see in the mirror vs. what everyone else sees.

And that's just in the purely physical sense, before you get into the mindgames we play with ourselves. And oh, do we play them. My own relationship with the mirror remains largely that of a dancer -- it's a tool for finding faults, but also for fixing them, and most of all for practicing and adjusting what I show to the world. I get along much better with my reflection than with most photos of me (which is probably why Cleo's post stuck with me), but still... Well, there's a reason that searching, critical look in Lizzie's eyes is so very, very familiar.

It's funny that, as Kirsty Stonell Walker pointed out in a post a few months back over at The Kissed Mouth, there's a metric truckload of Victorian art assuming women's relationship with the mirror to be all about vanity. But I'm inclined to think that then, as now, it was a whole lot more complicated than "Oh, look at how pretty I am!"  I can't help but imagine that within each painting where the viewer sees a glamorous nymph admiring herself, the nymph herself sees something a bit more stark looking back at her.

Jane Eyre painted Blanche Ingram as imagined perfection, on ivory with her finest pigments, before ever meeting her in person -- and depicted herself on plain paper with every flaw laid bare. All those dudes painting the girls in love with their mirrors should have checked with Miss Bronte or Miss Siddal for the real score.



(And on that note, back to my reflection of Lizzie, coming soon to a stage near you. Just as soon as it has a whole script. I'm getting there. This thought process is distilling its way in as we speak...)

Getting my geek on

In which our Diva babbles about supernatural housemates for fun and no profit

I mentioned Being Human briefly in my last post, but in my other life as an  Unapologetic Squeeing Fangirl, I've been known to go on at far, far greater length and in rather exhaustive detail. :-)

Fortunately for me, there are other people who go in for that sort of thing, including the ever-charming Andy, host of the "Being Human Cast" podcast. Recently he was kind enough to invite me back for a third time as guest host, to discuss "Adam's Family" (series 3, episode 2), and the episode is now live on their site and on iTunes.  If you're a fan of the show, give us a listen, and please stop by the podcast website to leave a comment!

Wholesome and good for most uses

In which our Diva checks out the view from the Victorian mom zone


A few years ago, a stage manager said to me, "You know, you're the most wholesome person I know." Before I could do more than smile, she followed it up with, "But I mean it as a good thing!"

Then, as now, I thought, what the heck does it say about us -- as theatre people, and as a larger culture -- that "wholesome" is presumed insulting until proven otherwise?

Now, I've got nothing against dark, violent, and/or morally slippery stories and characters in and of themselves. (As anyone who's known me for more than, oh, maybe 45 minutes can attest.)  What I am getting pretty tired of, though, is the cynical notion that these are the only stories worth telling in our imperfect world. The utterly threadbare, but still ubiquitous, belief that happy relationships, happy people, are inherently boring. That any apparent goodness in human nature must be fake, or foolish gullibility, or somehow self-serving.

The truth is, unrelenting "grit" and grimness isn't any more accurate a reflection of reality than unalloyed Pollyanna perk. And a philosophy insisting upon it is certainly not the be-all and end-all of depth or maturity. In fact, it's pretty darn adolescent in my book. And has been since I was an adolescent. If brighter stories don't hold the interest of your personal taste, that's fine, but the moment you start claiming some sort of moral or intellectual superiority because of it, I will laugh at you. A lot. (My lack of patience with snobbery of pretty much any kind is well-documented.)

This topic pops up in my head every once in a while, and of course it's on my mind as I head down the tech week rabbit hole for Little Women. Not only a musical, but one based on a novel intended primarily for younger readers, published in 1868/69, in which the most violent act is the immolation of the only copy of a novel manuscript. There are no villains -- even the society girls and their marriage-conscious mothers, who would be shallow mean-girl caricatures in virtually any other hands, are defended in the novel's narrative as acting in good faith for reasons they mistakenly consider important -- and it would be easy to assume there's no conflict and therefore no story.

The truth is, there's plenty of conflict, among the adolescent March sisters and with the outside world, just on a subtler scale and with a lighter touch than our current culture has trained us to appreciate. Even our comic-book heroes are expected to be angst-ridden and "gritty" or risk being dismissed as cheesy, sentimental, two-dimensional. I hadn't realized just how tired I was of that until I was unexpectedly delighted this past summer by a recap of Captain America that (amid the hilarity) articulated perfectly why it was my favorite of the season's surfeit of comics adaptations:

Steve was chosen for the program because, as a physically weak man, he knows the power of strength better than anyone else. Steve says “Thanks…I think.” It‘s a good thing, Steve! I really like that these actors and the script can make this seem like it isn’t a hackneyed concept. A lot of reviews have discussed the nostalgia inherent in this film, and I think that’s true, but I also think that these ideas that seem nostalgic–earnestness, a desire to do what’s right, the lack of MISERY AND DARKNESS at the hero’s core that explains everything about who he is (Christopher Nolan’s Batman, my laundry hamper is not a good hiding place)–are just things that we’ve forgotten are actually good things as a society. Pop culture is so entrenched with characters that have ~dark secrets~, even the good guys, so somebody like Steve Rogers comes along and we don’t know what to do with him. I’m glad that the movie’s doing well and I’m glad that people are responding positively to him, because sweetness and light is not a sustainable course for films to take, but it really doesn’t hurt to have a hero you can get behind 100% every few years. You can’t get behind Christopher Nolan’s Batman 100%, because he’ll probably kill you in your sleep without even meaning to. That guy’s crazy.

Speaking of comics adaptations (although I haven't read the source in this case), The Walking Dead continues to get critical and audience accolades, and remains a fixture of Sunday nights in my living room. Talk about relentlessly grim -- a post-zombie-apocalypse storyscape whose creator has stated outright that it's about what the state of the world does to people. Throughout the second season, without getting too spoilery, I've gotten ever more frustrated with the way the group tends to take the most honest and generous characters -- T-Dawg and especially Glenn -- for granted, and pleased to see other characters and the narrative finally start pointing out that injustice. The story emphasis on the festering secret of Lori and Shane's adultery, and the mounting evidence that adultery is the least of what Shane is capable of, quickly wore thin for me, but led to what I consider a key moment: when Lori interrupts Shane's latest hackneyed self-serving speech about "making the hard choices" to tell it like it is: "There's nothing hard about cutting our losses and running."

"Life is pain, Highness," Westley says to Buttercup in The Princess Bride, "and anyone who tries to tell you differently is selling something."  He's not wrong, but he's not right either, and even at that moment he knows better himself. It's all a test. (For which I spend a good half of both novel and movie wanting to smack him, but let's avoid that tangent for the moment.)

Back when I first fell in love with Being Human (the UK original, though there's a lot I like about the SyFy version as well), I summed up its core thusly: "Life is frequently and drastically unfair, but we find ways to make it worthwhile anyway." As that show has evolved into something larger and darker, it's sometimes struggled to hold onto that core and the close bonds of the constructed family at its heart, but the message remains.

There's nothing hard about cutting our losses. There's nothing hard about dismissal and mockery and hipster cynicism. Finding a balance... Ah, that one's a little trickier.

Circling this back around to my current theatrical endeavor, it's all too easy to dismiss the seemingly small dramas of the March family as quaint, fluffy, irrelevant to our 21st-century experience. And it's a mistake.

Little Women runs four performances only, December 10-18, 2011, at the Cosman Cultural Center in Huntley, Illinois. Visit the GreenRoom Productions website for details.

Women's Work

In which our Diva heads back on stage and back in time

One of the best groups of theatre people anywhere, Babes With Blades, has a fabulous in-depth New Plays Development Program, and much to my delight they've invited me to be part of it again. I'm one of the cast for the public reading of Deeds Not Words: The Rise of The Jujitsu Suffragettes by Anne Bertram, which tells the complex story of members of the Women's Social and Political Union fighting for the vote. I had the opportunity to take part in a closed reading earlier in the development process, so it's extra cool to see how the play has evolved and be there for its first bow in front of an audience.


There's far more history here than can be told in a single play, of course, but it's a fascinating story that I think will engage audiences while they're in the theatre and hopefully afterward too.  It's not just about how a group of suffrage activists came together with Edith Garrud to learn to defend themselves with martial arts in a manner one might not immediately associate with middle-class British ladies in 1913. The fracturing of the movement, the personal cost as leaders began to move in different political directions, is at the heart of the drama. It's a story well worth the telling.


The public reading of Deeds Not Words will be held at The Second Stage (3408 N. Sheffield, Chicago) at 1 p.m. on October 22. Admission is free.

After that (well, in the midst of it, actually, since the rehearsal schedules are concurrent) I'll be doing my first musical (yay!!) in several years, as Marmee in Little Women with GreenRoom Productions. I picked up the book from the library on the way home from work, since I last read it when I was about 9. It's... large. I don't remember it being that large. Mind you, I was a pretty hardcore reader as a kid, so it doesn't really surprise me that I don't remember it being daunting or anything. I do remember it being an emotional rollercoaster, and the snippets I've heard so far of the show's score (it's a different adaptation from the one produced on Broadway a few years back) promise to serve that purpose very well indeed. I'm excited to revisit it as an adult, with an eye toward identifying with Marmee instead of Jo! (I always feel like I should pick one of the other girls, like identifying with Jo is a bit cliche, but, well.)


Little Women runs two weekends, December 10-18, at the Cosman Theater in Huntley, IL.  Tickets are $20 in advance ($15 for students and seniors), and will be available online at the GreenRoom website sometime shortly after their current production of Doubt closes.


If you can make it to either or both shows, I'd love to see you!

Autumn in Hollywood Midwest

In which our Diva ponders leaves falling and cameras rolling

Long time, no blog, once again. Oops.  Part of that I can blame on a one-two punch of a nasty summer cold and a sneaky computer virus that took out both my netbook and my desktop within 24 hours.  I've also been auditioning a lot and doing a little bit of background work on a couple of TV shows.

Being an extra is a funny thing. I joke a lot about people thinking of actors as weird parts of the set that move on their own, but with background, that's almost literally true. This living room would look weird without a couch, so we put one in it.  This party would look weird without people milling around, so we put them there.  It's not really acting, but it can be a good time, and it's a great way to learn about how things work on a big-time set.

So far this year, I've worked on the new series Boss, which premieres on Starz in October, and the second season of Showtime's Shameless.  Like a lot of shows set in Chicago, past and present, the latter mostly shoots in L.A., but they do come here for more than just second-unit establishing shots, bringing the principal cast a couple times a year for a week or so at a time, and that work is definitely appreciated by extras and local crew members alike.

The former, though, is part of what we're starting to see more of: A series filmed entirely in Chicago, studio scenes and all. That increased activity has been rendered feasible by several factors, including the renewal of the 30% tax credit for another ten years by the state legislature, but a definite linchpin has been the opening of Cinespace Chicago in the defunct Ryerson Steel complex. For a while there, it looked like the studio facility -- a new venture of a company that already runs a successful production complex in Toronto -- wasn't going to happen.  There'd been buzz when they first made the deal for the Ryerson property, but then the estimated timetable for opening the first stage came and went, and I didn't hear anything more.

And then I did: In addition to Boss, the studio was home to portions of Transformers 3 and the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Then, a day after Fox's gut-punch cancellation of last season's The Chicago Code -- which made its home at the already-established Chicago Studio City -- local talent and crew got a shot of good news in NBC's pickup of The Playboy Club, which is now occupying pretty much every available inch of Cinespace through December.  This summer has also seen visits from the superhero pilot Powers and (briefly) from the Man of Steel himself.  (But Batman went and abandoned us for Pittsburgh. That's just rude, Mr. Wayne.) 


That's a lot of activity. We've got room for more! And it's especially heartening to see them casting minor speaking roles as well as extras locally, as well as opportunities for area natives like Jennifer Beals to come home to work for a while.  On Boss, I lucked into a featured-extra spot with the campaigning governor, played by Steppenwolf veteran Francis Guinan, who has managed to remain Chicago-based while building a solid character-actor career. I'd love to be able to do that.

Everyone says you have to go where the work is, and there's no denying the truth of that. But here's hoping Chicago continues to be where more and more of the work is.  We've got the people, and increasingly we have the infrastructure. The success of the productions that are already here will help that grow. Here's hoping!