Friday, February 27, 2009

Where's that "smite" key?

In which our Diva is unimpressed

As much as I hate it when talent scammers waste my valuable time, I just about sprained something laughing at the sloppy boilerplate email I got from one of them this morning.  They want me in their "roaster!"  Talk about truth in advertising...

It can never be said enough, because there will always be hopeful people who don't know: NEVER EVER EVER pay a penny upfront for representation!  The ones who get you in their office and hard-sell classes and photos and whatever are still around, but now you also have outfits like this Talent Watchers, where you can sign up for free, but then find out your profile isn't visible to casting people until you pay for it.  By, naturally, giving them your credit card info.  New technology, same old tricks.  (Though usually the brick-and-mortar ones can spell!)

A quick visit to Google gave me a new blog to follow, as she just posted about this same scam (under a different company name - more red flags!)  a couple days ago:


She also has links to other great resources on the topic, including the FTC's advice on avoiding acting/modeling scams, and (in the comments) one to an older column of Bonnie Gillespie's on the same topic.

Roaster.  Man, if you wrote that in fiction, nobody would believe it.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

From every toilet bowl to every leading role

In which there is Full Diva Mode, with tongue firmly planted in cheek

Video clips from the October fundraiser are up! It was a crazy day for me -- I bailed on curtain call at the Dracula matinee to change in a flurry and drive like the wind back to Elgin in time to sing "This Place Is Mine." (There's a minute or so of Larry's emcee thing before the number starts.)



For those who don't already know, this was done in loving parody of our many-hats-wearing artistic director, and was in fact her idea. I'm wearing one of her costumes from Traviata a couple years back. (And yes, the song is funnier when it ends on the B, but I'm not the boss. I just play her at parties.)

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Oscar Night Festival of Singers

Elgin Opera and Villa Verone present a delicious musical alternative to spending your night in front of the TV! Our singers are dressing to the nines for a red-carpet event featuring music from (and about!) the movies, all in an intimate cabaret atmosphere.Join us from 6-8 this evening at Villa Verone Ristorante Italiano at 13 Douglas Avenue in downtown Elgin for great food and great music with an extra dash of Hollywood glamor! There's no cover, but reservations are recommended - call (847) 742-0263.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Movie sign!

In which our Diva has way too many Google News Alerts set up

Cyrus is starting to turn up on horror news sites/blogs. Looks like it's thanks to the distributor, Moonstone Entertainment, which is making a preliminary promo image available. Always good to have a visual when you're trying to start generating buzz.

They're shooting some additional pickups (there's a posting on the Craigslist gigs section today for extras to play more victims, as well as poster models), so now it's that post-production period of "OMG I wanna seeeeee iiiiit!" that always seems to go on forever. But, yay, promos!

Monday, February 9, 2009

Houston, we have a reel

In which our Diva wails a number of Naughty Words at her computer for two weeks, but only one in the finished product





\o/

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Keep on movin' movin'

In which our Diva has a scattering of Sunday morning thoughts

Busy week on tap -- a couple new auditions, and table read for Hell the King, the dark comedy short I'll be shooting in a couple weeks. I put a news item on my website, but hadn't gotten around to saying anything about it here. Every actress (especially if she's an old comics geek!) should get to play an Intrepid Reporter, and now I get mine. Her name is Tara Kyles, and she's on the scene with the latest as the minions of Satan go on strike. Can't wait to see how this one comes together!

Backstage at the Elgin Opera gala last weekend, one of the other choristers mentioned how impressed his wife was with my performance at a recent Festival of Singers night at Villa Verone. He quoted her as saying "There's something about the way she sings that just compels you to listen." Wow!! How often do we get a compliment like that? I wanted to throw my arms around her and hug her, if she'd been there in person. More importantly, though, how often do we remember the compliments? Something that gobsmacking, sure -- it instantly went into my arsenal of Amazing Things People Have Said To Me that I use as talismans when the negative mental soundtrack cranks up. But the most trivial stuff goes onto the negative soundtrack, while I have probably half a dozen talismans. They're powerful ones, crystal-clear memories of these amazing things people have said to me at various times, and their faces and the environment when they said them. But so many other wonderful little gifts are heard and accepted and don't go into the arsenal, except for a vague notion that "people said nice things." Maybe that's its own talisman, I don't know.

Still going great guns on That Other Stuff, still having fun. Even when software does not entirely cooperate. My reel is now edited, and I'm experimenting with the best ways to get it up online for all the world to see! And yeah, there's a little bit of quaking in the boots about that. In theatre, there's a finite number of people in a finite time frame who see your work and have an opinion about it. Put your acting not only on film/digital but on the Internet, and anyone could stumble by. There's not nearly as much quaking as excitement, though, because, hey, look! We live in a world where we can put our work in pixel form on the Internet for anyone who stumbles by, and how cool is that?

I had a small epiphany over in the comments on Sandra Joseph's blog this morning -- something that's been happening in my head for a while, but it crystallized in the process of putting it into words, which so often happens: I'm working on training myself out of saying "I should have done this years ago." I've been saying it a lot -- about moving to Chicago, about getting more seriously into film -- but the truth is I should be doing this now. That's the lesson of so many exciting things starting to bear fruit. (Incidentally, if you're not reading her, you have a hole in your positivity-generating blogosphere. She doesn't update terribly often, but it's always worth the wait. I was about to say I wish I'd gotten to know her better in college, but pursuant to the rest of this paragraph, the truth is we're meant to be reading and learning from one another now!)

In closing, I leave you with the single most awesome thing I have seen in weeks:



May we all share this much joy in what we do.