A Year And A Day

In which our Diva has recorded a few more poems, and made a pretty video to go with one

Voicing the Vespers

In which our Diva has the title role, in a manner of speaking

Check out the amazing-looking first trailer for this unique SF feature, independently produced entirely in Chicagoland with all local creative staff, talent, and crew.



I was initially brought on board to do just the opening narration, but the gig evolved into a little bit more. Can't say more until the movie is out, but I'm excited to see/hear how it all came together!

Be sure to check out the offical site, like Voice of the Vespers on Facebook, or follow the production on Twitter to learn more!

Witches and Roses

In which our Diva has been keeping out of trouble. Or maybe getting into more. She isn't sure.

There's a wealth of creativity and boundary-pushing at the lowest-budget end of the indie film world, but with all the challenges inherent in making something out of practically nothing, the visual textures of fantasy and history, as a rule, are left to those with ample resources to create them.

Every rule was made to be broken. :-)

I'm over the moon to have two examples in my acting life right now. One is a brand-new project, Colin Clarke's Witchfinder, in which I'll be playing the titular witch. (Say that ten times fast! Or maybe not.) Principal photography will take place in November, and in the meantime Colin and his team are hard at work creating the gritty period details that will make this look like no other horror short I've seen. I've already been involved in one rehearsal -- we have limited time in historic locations, so the aim is to eliminate as many unforeseen variables as possible before then -- as well as had my whole body encased in duct tape for top-secret FX purposes and had a first costume fitting. It's going to be an amazing process, and I couldn't be more excited to be in the thick of it.

The other, of course, is the dark fantasy fairy-tale update Rose White, which you've been hearing about since I filmed my scenes last spring and summer. The official theatrical trailer has just been released, and is gobsmackingly gorgeous.

The Boy Who Looked Suspicious

In which our Diva's life imitates art imitating life

Yesterday I had the privilege of watching this brilliant young actor share a scene with veteran powerhouse Kelsey Grammer.

Rotimi Akinosho is a soft-spoken, engaging young man who's "still getting used to" being recognized on the street. As extras, anyone who wants to keep working knows to respect the actors' space and working process, and it's understood that we leave them alone unless they address us. Sometimes that's an awkward dance, like during yesterday's rain-enforced downtime, when twenty extras were instructed to gather in a building entryway where Rotimi's chair had been placed in the corner. He could have retreated farther into the building, but instead chatted with extras about his experience of the neighborhoods of Chicago, his college days at Northwestern, and how blessed he is in this role at the start of his career.

A couple weeks ago, I tweeted about looking forward to the impending return of Boss for a second season of production in Chicago, and was surprised by a reply from Rotimi -- who I hadn't even known was on Twitter -- that he was looking forward to being back too. Yesterday, between takes, he shook my hand and told me it was nice to meet me in person. He's down-to-earth, smart, and incredibly talented, and I look forward to watching him grow and continue to succeed.

At one point, the scene called for Rotimi to pull up his hood as he walked away, a perfectly sensible action on a rainy day.

And as this slight, baby-faced figure in the hoodie walked by, my stomach lurched. Because on another street, on another rainy day, unprotected by the bustle of a television crew and security detail, another bright young man's promising future was extinguished by a bullet.

As I drove home last night, there was another lurch, as a BBC World Service anchor quoted President Obama saying that if he had a son, he would look like this. The media and public discussion swirling around the Trayvon Martin tragedy is grappling with a dozen complicated and interlocking demons of the American social psyche, which will take months if not years to untangle and properly name, let alone really address. Many are how-could-this-happen?? shocked, while others are bitterly unsurprised, only heartbroken that it cost this teenage boy's life for the world to even begin to notice the minefield their children face every day.

In early coverage of the case, we were told George Zimmerman had stated that he thought Trayvon was "suspicious" because he was walking slowly in the rain with his hood pulled up. Earlier this week, I had to wonder what was going through the head of Zimmerman's attorney when he let his client publicly assert that this beanpole kid, armed with nothing more deadly than sugar and caffeine, attacked a stranger with ten years and a hundred pounds on him. Where on earth that line of defense is leading, only time will tell, but one thing is certain: They're banking on the justice system to believe it, and not without reason.

Black male in a hoodie. In any movie, TV show, or even advertisement, it's shorthand for shady dealings, gangs, drugs, violence. Even in a sophisticated context designed to subvert or deconstruct the trope, it works because the trope is already there. And where pop-culture images go, public perception follows. A casually dressed black guy can never be just a casually dressed guy.

On Wednesday, a grass-roots "Million Hoodie March" took shape in street demonstrations and online solidarity. One of those posting a picture for the latter was Elon James White, creator of the satirical webseries This Week in Blackness. As he recounts on Tumblr, this resulted in a commenter objecting that "This is a thug in a hoodie" and that it confused the message. The photo, of course, is of White himself, and you can see at the link above how the dialogue played out. And you can bet the farm that the commenter -- who did not back down from their original position -- would have said no such thing about an image of a thirtysomething white guy wearing the same casual outfit, facial hair, and appropriately sober expression.

On Boss, Rotimi's character, Darius, is by no means an upstanding innocent. Neither is he simply a "thug," though it would be easy at a glance to label him as such and write him off. There's a reason we first met him as the worried caretaker of an elderly uncle. Boss is a grim show, committed to throwing a harsh light on the worse angels of our nature behind the gloss of political maneuvering, rife with racial tensions and moral corner-cutting. I have to admit it's not something I'd regularly watch on its own considerable merits, if it weren't the proud flagship drama of Chicago's growing TV industry, produced entirely here and well stocked with local talent and crew. It's a little too grim for my taste, but I'm still glad it's here.

And when I watch the scene we shot yesterday, I'll be thinking about that hoodie, and what the costume designer knows perfectly well it symbolizes. And watching for how the visual code plays out, for Darius, and for Rotimi, and for a nation of young men with their lives ahead of them.

The stuff of fairy tales

Still a zillion things going on, and my brain is too busy to organize them into a post that makes sense, but I just had to share this bit of gorgeousness.

There's been a flurry of activity on the Rose White publicity front this week, leading up to the trailer expected to be released in the next few weeks.  I've seen a rough cut of the film, and couldn't be more excited to be part of it. I really think it stands out as unique in the current indie film landscape, and have high hopes that it will take the festival circuit by storm. Even better, it comes from a savvy team who know that it's not enough to just make a great film -- you have to get eye-catching suppport materials out there and spread the word too.

Enter Dennis Willman of Iron Dead Studios, who's created this amazing poster in the best fantasy-movie tradition. Just blown away.

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!

Bunnies and buzzwords

In which our Diva is officially tired of the word "empowerment"

In the wake of The Playboy Club's moment in the spotlight at the annual Television Critics Association press tour, debate is bouncing around the internet about just what the show means. Personally, I think what it means is really damn complicated, and that's exactly what I like about it. Is what I'm about to say colored by the fact that the show is being produced in Chicago and employing some of my friends and colleagues? Probably. But that's not the only reason I want it to be good and do well.

Some people, notably Melissa Silverstein over at the indispensible Women and Hollywood, have zeroed in on the comments by cast members asserting that the position of their characters is proto-feminist and "progressive."  There's more skepticism about this than I think the the comments actually warrant, though Silverstein is right that Amber Heard's attempt to explain her position didn't quite say what I think she intended it to. From my vantage point, sandwiched between Heard's generation and Gloria Steinem's, I can see both perspectives, and where and how they're missing each other. I've never hesitated to call myself a feminist, but it's not hard to see why many younger women do, and it's not quite the reason I've often seen put forth by their elders. Not so much that they think it entails various other political baggage, but that they have been repeatedly told that it does.

If I'm honest, I have to say I have more sympathy for those young women's position, because I've listened to those who paved the way before me, and heard how often what they have to say sounds an awful lot like "We didn't fight for your right to make your own choices just to have you make the WRONG choices!" How it sounds like going any way but theirs makes you an ungrateful wretch who's setting The Entire Cause Of Women back by decades. Think that sounds melodramatic? Check out the three, count 'em, three indignant comments on the W&H post by judybrowni, who apparently considers childish namecalling to be the appropriate response here. There is no quicker way to send my estimation of you into the toilet than to call any other woman a "bimbo" -- hey, how about throwing in "whore" or "witch" while you're at it? -- and tossing in "know-nothing" and "anorexic" (people still think that's okay? seriously?) into the bargain, along with rampant ageism and repeated implications that acting  isn't "real work" (And what possesses people from various walks of life to tell people from other walks of life that what they do for a living is invalid? It never, ever fails to sound petty and foolish.), pretty much seals the deal.

But I digress. I do think Heard's statement, as quoted in the post, was ill-chosen, and the whole spin of "it's all about empowerment" (although, has anyone from NBC actually used that overworked word, or is it coming from the press? h/t to Mizzelle for confirmation, via this NPR article, that yes, it seems to have started with executive producer Chad Hodge) is ill-advised. And Silverstein is right that the spin is what it's about at this stage of the game, but I'm a bit baffled as to why she -- who writes compellingly about the industry every day, and knows how the spin works and how little it often has to do with the actual product -- seems to be letting it color her impression of the show so much. I doubly scratched my head at this:

Me thinks this young woman better have a damn good show or she should just shut the fuck up and admit she’s on a show that’s about women wearing bunny costumes trying to get by in the world where it was really difficult for single women to get jobs that would pay a decent wage.  You see if they framed it that way, I could potentially be interested.

I... really don't understand how that's not what's being said. I honestly don't. That's exactly the impression I get from the interview videos on NBC's website, and at the Twitter stream from the press conference, and NBC's own description of the show as "a sophisticated series about the transitional times of the early 1960s and the complex lives of a group of working-class women."

One of the places I've seen that last quote is in this article over at Fangirltastic, in which regular contributor Theron expresses skepticism that the show will ultimately prove to be anything more than a standard-issue prime-time soap. She also touches on the much-publicized call to boycott by the Parents Television Council. And while I'm skeptical of the PTC's "Playboy = pornography = unalloyed evil" position, it has raised in advance issues that are relevant, and which seem like they will actually be part of the show. I've seen several comments in various places pointing out the tendency of many people to conflate Bunnies (hostesses/servers in the Playboy Clubs) with Playmates (nude models in the magazine). With this important distinction in mind, I was struck in the trailer by Brenda (Naturi Naughton) bluntly and proudly declaring her ambition to be "the first chocolate centerfold."  There are multiple thorny issues wrapped up in that one line -- the divide between Bunny and Playmate and what it means when one woman sees the first as a stepping stone to the second; our culture's unsettled relationship with a woman who chooses to trade on her sexuality as a commodity; the fetishization of race. (The last is particularly interesting in light of the way Naughton has embraced the "chocolate Bunny" label in her own press statements.)



"You're either the living, breathing fantasy that is the Playboy Bunny," admonishes senior Bunny Carol-Lynne (Laura Benanti), "or you're not." Hugh Hefner tweeted earlier this evening, "Was being a Playboy Club Bunny in the 1960s empowering or exploitation? Why not ask the original Bunnies themselves? They'll tell you."

I don't have one to ask, but it seems to me the only honest answer is "both." That's certainly what I'm looking forward to in the show, based on the glimpses NBC has given us. And if that seems nostalgic or irrelevant, take a look at this photo from NBC's mock Playboy Club at the recent San Diego Comic Con, of a Bunny flanked by two Tilted Kilt servers. Time warp, anyone?

So, bottom line: We're looking at a show about a very messy and complicated time and place for women. At least, I hope that's what they'll let it be. Because the messy and the complicated haven't entirely left us, and that's the story I'm interested in seeing.

Shameless plug time

In which our Diva is, well, shameless

Keep meaning to write nice meaty posts on a couple of topics, keep not quite getting to it. Until I manage it, here are a few things that have come down the pike since my last post:

Photographer Daryl Darko's new book Cemetery People is now available for ordering, and looks amazing! You can preview it on the linked site. I'm delighted to be featured among the eclectic mix of people captured by Daryl's lens.

From visual to auditory, Elgin OPERA is back with the "Festival of Singers" at Villa Verone from 6-8 pm every Sunday evening through August. I got all involved in setting up my new computer this weekend, and completely forgot to let you lovely folks know I'd be singing last night. D'oh! But I'll be back next week (July 24), and probably a couple of Sundays in August, contingent on my schedule. I'll confirm the dates ASAP.

Resonance is starting to gain momentum, with new cells popping up all over the place! So excited to see what stories the community will come up with to expand the world. The first Chicago video scene is now live, with more being planned for shooting as the summer progresses, along with in-character blog and social media content, and an experiment or three in storytelling in different media. We're currently looking for a logo design for the fictional record label that figures into our story. So here's that key question... Will you help?

In the meantime, you can see Beth and Alice get together to catch up on life since Alice moved to L.A., and compare notes on the early stages of their investigation. This was edited from about 20 minutes of improvised material, shot by the terrific Adam Daniels. The folks at Bistrot Margot could not have been more friendly and helpful, and we had ourselves a yummy brunch besides! If you're looking for a great meal in the Old Town neighborhood, you won't go wrong there.

It's the nature of guerrilla filmmaking that something will always go wrong, and in this case it was the input from our body mikes suddenly deciding not to work when we were actually shooting, even though they were fine when we tested twice! Our experiment with homegrown ADR was also, unfortunately, less than successful. I managed to clean up a lot of the traffic noise, but it and the music at the restaurant still definitely intrude on the scene, so you might want to watch with the captions turned on. (Click the little "CC" near the right-hand end of the video's control bar.)



Onward and upward!

It's here!

In which our Diva is available on podcast and DVD

Two and half years after our time at the Icebox Inn (not unusual for an indie feature), Cyrus: Mind of a Serial Killer is out on DVD today! I'm honored to be part of such a knockout cast, and proud to have played sidekick to the fabulous Patricia Belcher.

My friend (and fellow Resonance collaborator) Mary Czerwinski is co-host of DVD Geeks on Fearless Radio, and she was kind enough to invite me on for a brief interview to go with their review of the flick on this week's show. Check out the podcast on their site. Mary and John have the skinny on the new releases every Monday night, and I can guarantee you they know their stuff!

Speaking of Resonance, we're planning plots and plotting plans for new Chicago story content and clues in a couple different formats. Look for a link or two by the weekend, and be sure to follow the Twitter feed or Facebook page to keep up with the latest developments.

Do you believe?

Things are moving fast in the Resonance world today! As I type this, the summer party is probably still going strong in London, though it's fast approaching 1 am there. I'd be lying if I claimed not to have a pang at not making it over there this time, but it's been fun to watch various attendees tweeting about it, and I'm looking forward to more pictures and impressions once they've gone home and gotten some rest. (On balance, probably just as well I'm home this time -- besides having lots to do as the project moves into its next phase, it's a busy production time in Chicago, with lots of auditions and background work going on, and I don't need to be missing those!)

In conjunction with the event, lots of content has become publicly available today that wasn't before. The eight-minute mini-pilot, "The Morning After," has previously been presented at several events in addition to being shared with team members. Now it's at your fingertips in all its HD glory, ripe for the puzzling!



At the same time, the call for engagement from our audience has gone out on the main Facebook page, together with an FAQ guide to how to go about getting involved. (Click on the "Discussions" tab at the left-hand side of the page.) This includes a link to "The Story," a detailed summary of the beginning events in the core narrative (more than I knew before today, and I've been working on this project for months!), which  highlights opportunities to hook your ideas into the story.

Meanwhile, there's still some technical work to be done on the first scene in our Chicago story, but until then, we've posted a phone conversation between Alice (Mary Czerwinski) and Beth (me) that kicks off the investigation that will lead them... well, you'll just have to see, won't you?



If you want to make a "The Morning After," you need a full-blown TV crew under a kickass director like Colin Teague. But that's not the only way to start a story.

What will be yours? I'd love to see!

She left the web, she left the loom

In which our Diva boosts a signal

If you follow LizzieSiddal.com and/or the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood blog, you probably know that the family of their creator, the lovely and dedicated Stephanie Pina, is going through some trying times involving large medical bills.

Enter WAG Screen, producers of the amazing-looking independent film version of The Lady of Shalott that Stephanie has been plugging on her blogs from the beginning. For the next five weeks, 50% of proceeds from DVD sales of the film go to benefit this family in need.

The online community of Pre-Raphaelite enthusiasts is far-flung, and Stephanie's sites are two of the key meeting points. If you've seen her posts or others about the film and thought about checking it out, or if this is the first you've heard of it, now is the perfect time to order it and help give back to one of our own.

We Create Resonance

In which our Diva heads into a busy summer

Last week was one of my craziest ever, and that's saying something! It was funny -- as of Sunday night, my evenings were entirely free, but by Monday night, the calendar was a wall-to-wall patchwork of deadlines, auditions, day-job shifts, and a day as an extra on Boss, a new Starz series starring Kelsey Grammer as the mayor of Chicago. (I didn't work with him, but I did have a nice featured spot in the scene, and had a great time with the instant family they assigned me to that morning. You never know what's going to happen with background work, which is really the fun part.)

Bit more time to breathe this week, but still a lot to get done. In the midst of it, I came in contact online the other day with a writer/producer who was kind enough to share with me a draft of his script in development. There's a lot for his company to do before there's an opportunity to audition for the character I immediately fell in love with, and of course there are never any guarantees of anything. But it's nice to dream and to turn over this potential person in my head.

One week from today is the summer Resonance event. I'm not off to London this time around, alas, but I'm planning to be there by Skype. If you're in the UK, why not sign up to attend? You can meet the team, learn where we go from here and how you can help, and then tell me all about it afterward! :-)

If you're not in that neck of the woods (or even if you are), visit the Resonant Object Facebook page for instructions on submitting a video postcard to be part of the evening's presentation. It doesn't have to be terribly fancy; here's my team's contribution:

Rose, rose, rose red

In which our Diva is heard but not yet seen

Take a gander at the lovely and spooky teaser for Rose White! As previously noted, my role is a small one, so I didn't expect to appear in the teaser at all. But my voice does (and thankfully doesn't sound as ragged as it felt that night)!

Even though I was only on set a few hours, the great group of people involved in this unique film (who continue to work hard) have welcomed me as part of the family, and I look forward to all their hard work and dedication being rewarded with a great reception for it. Fingers crossed!

Rose White Teaser from Dan Kuhlman on Vimeo.

Quantum characterization

In which our Diva wears her geekitude on her sleeve

I had the weirdest thought in the shower this morning, and it's been circling around my head all day, picking up threads and particles of thoughts that weren't initially attached to it. (I was having a Monday disguised as a Wednesday at my day job, so it injected an interesting dimension into solving the various little crises that were pinging at my head.) It was a thought in my head, which is to say it doesn't necessarily fit in language very well, but it more or less boils down to "Character motivation is like quantum physics."

Don't get scared off by that. It's actually pretty simple (as long as you're not trying to do the math). See, it sort of came out of something I've said a lot lately in some pretty disparate conversations, which is that nobody ever does anything for just one reason. And this morning, that led to a wider "nothing happens for just one reason." Which led (because this is the sort of thing my brain does all day long, and actually it's on the more linear/sane end of the scale) to the principle that every particle of matter in the universe is subject to the gravitational field of every other particle of matter in the universe. From where you sit, of course, the overwhelming majority of the matter in the universe is too far away for its gravitational pull on you to be even remotely measurable, but it's not actually zero.

Even more fun, quantum probability says that there's a chance -- again, ridiculously, immeasurably tiny, but not zero -- that some particle waaaaaaaaaaay over there will suddenly decide to be right here instead. For no reason that we yet know of, with no way to entirely accurately predict it.

(The last couple paragraphs are a really really simplified version of ideas you can explore in all kinds of very accessible and readable forms. I'm partial to Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos. They're clear, informal, and full of great analogies featuring everything from Bart Simpson's skateboard to Fox Mulder's "I Want to Believe" poster. I'm not even kidding.)

Which brings us back to the shower this morning, and my weird geeky actory thought. Because all of this applies to people too. Which of course means it also applies to characters.

If we think at all about why we do whatever we do at any given moment, it's the immediate influences -- the things with the measurable gravitational field -- we're likely to put it down to. But there are dozens, even hundreds more pieces of "why," a whole universe of little gravitational fields at work. And sometimes, when we least expect it, a stray particle makes a weird quantum jump, from a seemingly unrelated situation or something you experienced years and years ago, to fire something in our brains and say "Do this!" when this might seem from the outside to make no sense at all.

My friend Tara has an oft-repeated saying about writing: "If your characters have to act out of character for your plot to work, your plot doesn't work." And she's absolutely right, but we should be careful about what we say is "out of character." Obviously, a character whose actions seem completely random all the time isn't much of a character. But neither is one who's completely predictable, whose choices always make sense in light of what the audience can immediately observe.

This tends to freak out a lot of writers, I've noticed. Which might explain why so many of them seem to love the old "What's my motivation?" gag when they write actors as characters. It popped up again just a couple days ago on Castle, and was answered with a succinct "To do your job." Which not only made eminent sense, but carried a whole lot of implications for the fictional actor to unpack. Thing is, that fictional actor probably wouldn't have landed that fictional gig if he were that clueless. It often surprises people (presumably because they haven't really thought about it) when I explain that I always roll my eyes at the "what's my motivation?" gag because the very first thing you learn in any acting class, the most rock-bottom basic thing, is that answering that question is your job. The writer tells you what to do. The director tells you how to go about it. It's up to you to determine why you're doing it.

And even you might never know all the reasons. Not really. Because that's just like real people. Other people often give us insights into our own behavior that we never considered, just like audiences (if we're doing it right) find things in our performances that we didn't necessarily consciously put there. One of my favorite things in the world is when someone tells me something about a character of mine that I didn't know when I was playing her.  It's probably a lot of why I gravitate to characters -- whether to watch or to play -- who are a little reckless or even crazy, making the wrong choices and taking the wrong risks and dealing with the consequences, for reasons that don't always make a whole lot of sense. (I'm looking at you, Malcolm Reynolds, and Vicki Nelson, and John Mitchell, and Mary Shannon, and...) There are certain things you can be reasonably sure they'll do or won't do under a given set of circumstances... and then there are the quantum moments. That's when the magic really happens.