The Mom Zone revisited

In which our Diva spotlights a certain category of supporting character

A couple years ago, I hit a threshold in my acting career - the one where you start playing moms, and really never stop until you start playing grandmas. Since I don't have kids in real life -- and, due to the vagaries of genetics, was still frequently being asked where I went to school up until very shortly before that (and have been carded more than once since!) -- it felt weird. Really weird.

I've since gotten over that initial weirdness in the process of playing Busy Single Mom, Updated Fairy Tale Mom, Wholesome Civil-War-Era Mom, and Slightly Nervous Suburban Mom. Sure, it's great to be the lead once in a while, and women -- particularly mature women -- need to be more often, and in more varied ways. There should be more than this set of supporting roles out there for my type and age bracket. But that's a much larger discussion than I'm tackling today, and it doesn't change the fact that these roles, for all their limits, can be much more varied and meaty than we sometimes think.

Which is how I came to tweet last week, only semi-jokingly, that as long as I'm spending so much of my acting time in the Mom Zone, I want to be the Hollywood Midwest answer to Lena Headey.  Seriously, though, the last few years have seen this lady take on three, count 'em, three high-profile characters who function in their respective narratives primarily as mothers -- but you sure as heck can't say she's in a rut.

First, of course, she stepped into Linda Hamilton's iconic shoes as the ultimate "mama grizzly," Sarah Connor, on the TV spinoff Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Sarah started out (as seen in the original 1984 movie) an ordinary working-class girl, not long out of high school, who waited tables and went out dancing with her not-long-out-of-high-school friends, until one night Kyle Reese dropped out of the sky... er, future and informed her that her yet-unconceived son would be the only hope for the survival of the human race. Caught between trying to give John a childhood and preparing him for the brutal realities he would face as an adult, she made everything up as she went along, trusted nobody, got really really psychologically damaged, ended up more dangerous than most of the machines, and never ever, not once, failed to be riveting to watch.

Then of course, there's Game of Thrones' Cersei Lannister, defined primarily as mother -- particularly after Joffrey takes the throne and promptly derails any plans Cersei might have had of doing any actual reigning as Queen Regent -- but also as wife, sister, illicit incestuous lover, and most of all as bitter, viciously resentful product of a pseudo-medieval fantasy society's strictly enforced gender norms. She hates the role that's been thrust upon her but plays it to perfection and to whatever advantage she can gain, coping with an apparently endless royal wine cellar and a nasty pastime of mocking her intended daughter-in-law for believing and sincerely doing her best to embody the ideals of highborn feminity they've both been raised on. She is, by and large, an awful person who does awful things, and the show would be much poorer without Headey's sly, snarky performance.

Currently on multiplex screens (for the moment, anyway; the box office hasn't exactly been all they hoped for) -- and setting off this whole thought process -- we have Jocelyn Fray in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, who belongs to a subset of mom-dom that I'd quite like to take a crack at: the Unexpectedly Awesome YA Mom.

YA (for those who don't hang around the same people and blogs I do) stands for "young adult," and refers to a segment of the literary market primarily intended for teens. It's on my radar primarily as an arena where female authors are thriving and young female readers are finding a welcome breadth of young female characters driving their own stories. (Even more breadth would be great, of course, and it would also be nice if, say, publishers didn't go around slapping whitewashed cover images on the few books that do star PoC protagonists, but that's another topic getting important discussion elsewhere, and not my topic today.)

It's also on the public's radar, to the extent that it's a well Hollywood has been drawing from quite a bit the last few years, ever since Twilight caught them off-guard as a juggernaut franchise and finally brought to their attention the fact that teenage girls and young women have *gasp* actual, legal-tender money they quite like to spend on movie tickets. (The merits, or lack thereof, of said franchise are also beyond the scope of this particular post, and quite frankly I'd be happy to never see another comment about them as long as I live. Just so we're clear.)

Being girls, of course, the things they like can't possibly be actually worth anything (for a nice summary of that particular cultural meme and the problems with it, see this interview with YA author Sarah Rees Brennan), but their money? Ah, that can move mountains of calcified industry conventions. Or at least budge them a little.

But the thing I've been noticing as these movies based on YA (and middle-grades; let's not overlook the number of cars hooked to the Hogwarts Express here) books come out, even more than the fact that a lot of them have girl protagonists, is that said protagonists' moms are often some seriously awesome characters in their own right.

Now, mostly I'm familiar with the fantasy ones, because that's the genre I'll always gravitate to by default, regardless of the age bracket of its intended audience. So I don't know how much it holds for YA novels in other genres. But YA fantasy novels are often some variation on the "destined hero" narrative, with a protagonist who discovers some fantastic heritage kept hidden throughout her/his childhood. With that structure in place, Mom almost has to be involved in said heritage somehow, as a keeper of knowledge if nothing else. And she's often a lot else. (See also: Virginia Doyle, mother of Gemma, protagonist of A Great and Terrible Beauty and its two sequels, a property I would dearly love to see adapted to film even though nobody is going to let me play Virginia. Which I would love.)

Which brings us back to Jocelyn. Who was apparently even less prepared than Sarah Connor to raise a kid with A Destiny, since it's pretty clear that she had no opportunity to learn how to raise a kid at all. The secret society of Shadowhunters and their solemn duty to hunt demons with their special innate badass abilities seems great and all, until the younger (and more prominent) characters start telling you what it's like to actually grow up in that world. Which Jocelyn did, and there's a world of interesting in whether it was a good idea to keep that fact (and by extension a lot of other facts) from her daughter Clary, the central character. Like Sarah, she made up this whole parenting thing as she went along, and she got a lot of it right and a lot of it wrong, but at the end of the day she and Clary love each other ferociously even while they're arguing, and it's a beautiful thing to see. (Also, she's hell with a cast-iron skillet. That fight sequence is worth the price of admission all on its own.)

Mom's role is unquestionably a supporting one, but this week-plus later, I still find myself thinking a lot about it, even though the movie overall is kind of a hot mess, albeit one assembled from a lot of interesting bits.

I'm not sure what the point of all this musing is, except that I'd love to see more of this kind of story, and this kind of character, in the indie milieu. There's plenty of room for it, given that, for example, the YA properties picked up for big-budget adaptations are uniformly led by pretty white straight girls. It would be great to see Hollywood fix that, and I'm all for continuing to talk about how to get them to do so. While that inevitiably arduous process continues, though, I'm looking for the indie community to step up first and show them how it's done.

So how about it, indie filmmakers? When I look at the Chicago/Midwest casting breakdowns on Actors Access tomorrow, what kind of moms will I see? Stay tuned...

The ghosts of Lizzies past

In which our Diva considers those who have walked a particular path ahead of her, on the occasion of meeting one of them

Okay, they're all alive, so "ghost" is rather a misnomer, but as Unvarnished continues to take shape (in longhand, making this Tumblr post a relevantly giggle-worthy observation), I can hardly help being a little haunted by them!

The one I saw first and know best is also the most recent: Amy Manson in Desperate Romantics. However fast and loose the series played with history, I loved its complicated and ambitious Lizzie, and Manson's performance made me an instant fan. I'm delighted to see her career growing, and wish I could have seen her well-reviewed turn as Nora in A Doll's House at the National Theatre of Scotland this past spring.

(Maybe someday we'll get something that gives the women of the Pre-Raphaelite circle the rounded portrayals they deserve without being quite so thoroughly ahistorical. A girl can dream.)

Mind you, the 2009 series' flights of fancy are nothing next to Ken Russell's take on the same events a generation earlier! His 1967 Dante's Inferno is unapologetically theatrical, veering at times into psychedelia (yes, you can do that in black & white, at least if you're Ken Russell) and at others into music-hall or panto (what even is going on with Annie Miller?). In that context, the paradoxical mix of strength and fragility in Judith Paris' ballerina presence serves Lizzie well, if the film's narrative doesn't always.

In a 2011 interview, Paris recalled that Russell cast her based entirely on her physical resemblance to Lizzie. "I saw Millais’s 'Ophelia' in the Tate and thought, 'That’s me!' It wasn’t about talent; Ken didn’t care if I could act or not. I did a screen test and I told him, 'I’ve never acted  apart from at school and a few lines in musicals and I don’t have any training.' He said, 'I don’t care. I’ll make your performance in the editing room!' I was thrown from being a dancer to playing opposite Oliver Reed on the BBC, which was one giant step for mankind!" I particularly cock my head at this apparent keenness to match Lizzie's physical appearance, when his Gabriel was Oliver Reed. (Actually, the fact that the same historical person has been played by Oliver Reed, Ben Kingsley, and Aidan Turner, all of whom work quite well for various reasons, makes me go full quizzical-puppy.)

Until recently, I had known her only from a favorite classic Doctor Who story (that's her under Eldrad's pretty blue scales in "The Hand of Fear"), but she's had a distinguished theatre career, and I've been particularly delighted to learn that she has written and performed several one-woman shows about historical figures over the years -- just as I'm trying to do with Lizzie!

Between these two, in 1975, came the most elusive dramatization (like the other two, from Auntie Beeb), the six-part The Love School. To this day, I (like the rest of the online Pre-Raphaelite community) have seen less than seven tantalizing minutes:



Yes, that Patricia Quinn, the one who created the role of Magenta in a certain "science fiction double feature" that was immortalized on film the same year.

Which is how I came to meet her this afternoon, at the Flashback Weekend horror convention. I couldn't make it to the Rocky Horror Picture Show screening she hosted last night, but I made it over there today, and found a surprisingly short line at her autograph table. I had no idea if this was a role she had any particular fond recollections of, but when I opened my Lizzie journal to a page for her to sign and explained what it was, she lit up and chatted about it for a good ten or twelve minutes!

"I have it," she told me with a conspiratorial grin. "I have the whole thing." Apparently a friend who worked in the production office managed to get hold of it for her some years ago, a minor miracle for anything made in the days when the BBC routinely aired shows once and then tucked them away to (as any Doctor Who fan who knows about the legendary "lost episodes" can tell you) vanish into the storage abyss or even be taped over.

But The Love School is safe and sound in its Lizzie's home -- something that impressed even its director, who had never been able to get his hands on it! -- and apparently she got around not too long ago to watching the full series, instead of stopping after Lizzie died. After all these years, she's downright gushing about how marvelous a production it is, with particular notice of its William Morris.

My favorite bit of the conversation was the anecdote about the day she, Richard O'Brien, and another RHPS castmate (she mentioned first names, but I don't remember the second one) did some sort of Q&A session at the Oxford Union. On the way over, she happened on Ben Kingsley -- her Rossetti -- in the street, and chatted briefly with him. Then, at the event, she looked up at the murals painted in that infamous adventure of the late 1850s (Dear Gabriel: When working in an unfamiliar technique, research is your friend!), "and I thought, 'That's me!'" Apparently there was a sequence in the series where "we were all in there painting away" that I, for one, would give minor body parts to see!

Mind you, that was the point where I made the dubious step of mentioning Desperate Romantics (in the context of my disappointment at its eliding that whole process -- which could probably easily make a feature film in itself -- into Gabriel painting a single church panel alone), of which she is... not fond. And not shy about saying so. Partly because of its inaccuracies, but also, I think, a bit because "I was asked in for it, you know. They had me read for Ruskin's mother. And I said, 'Ruskin's mother??'" I cannot capture the indignation of that in text, but I'm sure you can imagine!

All in all, she is a thoroughly delightful lady, and I heartily recommend meeting her if you have the opportunity.

And now I have someone else I need to finish writing Unvarnished for, because she said she'd like to hear about it when it's finished. Best get back to work, then...

Red carpet season!

In which our Diva may be exaggerating just a touch with that subject line, but is still having an awfully good time

My first experience hosting an awards ceremony (along with the rest of the Prairie State Film Festival) was great fun, evening gown, sparkly jewelry, and all! I saw some terrific films and met some great new people. Thanks to the tireless Willy Adkins of Spook Show Entertainment, which sponsors several festivals throughout the year, for inviting me to be part of the festivities!

This has been a bit of a tumultuous year for Spook Show, as the longtime venue for its events, the historic Portage Theatre in Chicago, went through several months of rather public change-of-ownership drama before, sadly, closing its doors. The PSFF, originally slated to be held there, was moved to the House Cafe in DeKalb, which had not only friendly staff and great food, but the most awesome purple couch known to humankind. I couldn't resist perching for a photo during a festival intermission - it even went with my dress!

Speaking of festivals, Witchfinder's adventures on the indie circuit are now booked through September, with the addition of Dragon*Con in Atlanta and Halloween Horror Picture Show in Tampa added to the itinerary. Be sure to like the Witchfinder Facebook page to keep up with all the latest news, and hopefully a chance to see it near you!

Next up, though, is our Illinois premiere, in the Rockford hometown of writer/director Colin Clarke and most of our cast and crew! The Mosaic World Film Festival is this Saturday, August 3, and I'm looking forward to seeing Witchfinder on the big screen with our whole team. Chicagoland folks, come out and join us! Tickets are just $5, and will be available at the door starting at noon. Looks like some great stuff lined up, including good friend (and Raymond Did It writer/director) Travis Legge's latest annual zombie short, Li'l Bub.

Festival circuit

In which our Diva is stepping out all over the Midwest this summer

Update to the news in my last post: Due to the change in management at the previous venue, the Prairie State Film Festival has been rescheduled for July 20, and will be held at the House Cafe in DeKalb, Illinois. It's a more intimate venue, with plenty of character all its own, and I'm still looking forward to hosting the festivities..

Advance tickets are only $7. If you're in the area, consider spending a day enjoying some terrific independent films, a couple up-and-coming standup comics, and maybe a surprise or two. And please come up and say hello!

I spent last week adventuring in the wilds of northern California at the Actors' Retreat led by "unconventional coach" Molli Benson, an experience I'd recommend to anyone looking to cut through to the core of their truth and bring it home to their work.

While I was preparing to travel, we heard the welcome news that Witchfinder had been selected for the Gen Con Indy Film Festival The festival is part of the enormous Gen Con Indy event held every August at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. Known as "The Best Four Days in Gaming," the convention has kept its game-oriented roots while growing into a broadly appealing event for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror fans.

The film festival offers independent filmmakers an opportunity to appeal to that large audience -- an audience I've always been part of anyway! I'm always excited by film festival news, of course, but this one gives my geeky side something extra to squee about! If you're a Gen Con attendee, I'll probably bump into you in the exhibit hall, and I hope you'll take some time to check out the film festival too!

  

No sooner had I landed back in Chicago when I learned that we've also been selected for Fright Night Film Fest, July 26-28 in Louisville, Kentucky. I don't know yet if I'll make it to that one, but I'm looking into it. This one is also part of a larger event, with one heck of a lineup of celebrity guests. So again, if you're headed that way, why not poke your head into the film festival and watch me get my evil on?

The tapioca is spontaneous

In which our Diva has a new pursuit or two

Spring has finally properly sprung in Chicagoland, I'm almost over The Cold That Wouldn't Die, and I'm back with a shiny new project: a podcast entitled Spontaneous Tapioca. Click over and download or subscribe to give it a listen and find out, among other things, why I called it that. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff that my first guest Stacey Tappan and I think are inspiring, awesome, or just plain nifty.

I encounter a lot of creative folks with great perspectives, and I freely admit this new venture is my excuse to have long babbly conversations with them. But I think (hope!) they'll be interesting for other people too!

Also, an announcement I forgot to make in this space: I'm slated to host the Prairie State Film Festival at the
Portage Theater on July 27.

It's put on by the hardworking folks at Spook Show Entertainment, who produce several such events every year, including the Chicago Horror and Indie Horror festivals I've attended at various times. This one showcases films of all genres, and I'm all kinds of delighted to have the privilege of introducing them.

And now, off to enjoy this beautiful sunshine (finally got the bike out this year, yay!!) and then some audition prep. Hope your spring is all kinds of inspiring too!

Five things make a post

In which our Diva plugs a few of her favorite things

Watch: I'm a little behind with this recommendation, since the season 1 finale aired last night on Syfy, but Continuum sort of snuck up on me as a favorite, while proving one of my favorite points: A story doesn't have to be super-innovative and groundbreaking to be worth telling. On paper, it certainly seems like we've seen all this before: Members of a terrorist group escape execution in 2077 by traveling back in time, and a rank-and-file cop is inadvertently carried with them and dropped in the middle of 2012. Cue potential pardoxes, mysterious clues, and shocking revelations about the future of apparently ordinary people.

It's smartly written and beautifully designed and shot, with a solid ensemble peppered with familiar Vancouver-based faces, including Lexa Doig, Roger R. Cross, and Tony Amendola as the charismatic and enigmatic revolutionary leader.

The glue that holds it all together, though, is Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, the cop forced to navigate an unfamiliar world and driven by the twin -- and sometimes opposing -- motivations of stopping the revolutionaries from reshaping the future to their liking, and getting back home to that future and the husband and young son she left there. If you've only seen Nichols in GI Joe or Star Trek, you've only scratched the surface of what she's capable of. Kiera is as smart, tough, and resourceful as her role at the center of a sci-fi adventure requires. She's also a young mom ripped away from her family, an officer of the law forced to lie every day to the people she works with and depends on, and an idealist confronted with mounting evidence that the system she serves -- and the husband she loves -- may not be everything they seem. Nichols navigates all this with raw, breathtaking honesty, and breaks my heart every week.

Listen: All this week, BBC Radio presents a brand-new audio adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere with a gobsmacking cast ranging from rising young stars like Natalie Dormer to veterans like Bernard Cribbins to straight-up legend Christopher Lee. I'm a huge fan of the original 1996 TV miniseries (which many people don't realize came before the novel), and this new incarnation -- smartly updated for the cultural and technological developments of the last decade and a half -- breathes new life into Gaiman's colorful characters and places them in a flawlessly atmospheric aural environment. It's a great listen, and (unlike the BBC iPlayer's video content) you can catch it from anywhere in the world.

Follow: I ran across Grace Nuth's blog The Beautiful Necessity several years ago, and heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the Pre-Raphaelite and/or Arts and Crafts movements. But today I want to give a plug to her newer blog, Domythic Bliss, inspired by her ongoing mission to transform her home to reflect her artistic and story tastes (and, unlike what you tend to see in magazines, on an ordinary-person budget). Currently she's in the midst of a "Mythic March" series in which she and regular readers share current decorating, craft and art projects. If you want a practical way to live in a fairy-tale forest, get inspired by people making stuff, or just want to look at pretty things, you should definitely check it out.

Listen some more: I ran across Sandra Joseph's blog around the end of her record-setting Broadway run as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera. Of everyone I encountered way back in Michigan State's theatre department, she didn't surprise me a bit with that high-profile success, but I would never have predicted the direction she's taken since then. First in the blog, and then moving into a second career as a motivational speaker and coach, she's been unfailingly candid about her own anxiety and insecurities, and made a mission of inspiring and supporting others in achieving their dreams. The latest iteration of that is a new podcast, Behind the Mask Radio, featuring in-depth interviews with fellow artists, which has promptly landed a permanent spot on my "cynicism detox" list. If you're interested in being a creative person and also having a happy, healthy, balanced life, it's very much worth your time.

And finally, Looky looky looky! The gorgeous poster design for Witchfinder makes me feel like a real movie star.

I can't wait to see the finished film. It's already been selected for Panic Fest in Kansas City, MO, where it will screen as part of the Short Film Showcase on April 20. If you're in the area, I'd love it if you'd check it out and let me know what you think! There's talk of a cast/crew road trip, but it's early days, and I don't know if that'll happen. But I'll definitely keep you posted if it turns out I'm going!

Here a video, there a video

In which our Diva has not one, but two new videos to show you

Here a video: Nifty behind-the-scenes piece about Smoking Gun, the latest incarnation of GreenMan Theatre Troupe's annual dinner-theatre murder mystery. I'm finally getting in on the fun this year as Virginia Archer, headliner at the 1930s Los Angeles "clip joint" the Coconut Lounge.



There a video: You may have noticed I've been pretty busy the last couple years. As a result, here's my shiny new reel! I couldn't be happier with how it's turned out, and couldn't have done it without some pretty spiffy filmmakers who all keep their word and get actors their footage. Yay!

Trailers and festivals

In which various of our Diva's projects are coming to light

Film is a delayed-gratification world. You work intensely for a short time -- days, weeks -- and then comes the waiting. Which sounds sort of awful, except you then have nifty surprises trickling out all through the the post-production PR process. Maybe it's just me, but shiny things in which I look all professional and stuff are that much more exciting when they pop up on my computer as I'm sitting here in my PJs with scrungy hair.

A quick rundown of the things I've been excited to see come to light lately:

Rose White continues to get fantastic reviews across the indie film blogosphere, and will soon be coming to a festival screen near, well, some of you. It's an official selection at the Nevermore Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, February 22-24 (keep an eye on their website for the full schedule). More festival dates are expected soon, and will be posted to the film's Facebook page and Twitter feed.

I've only seen a rough cut myself, but even in that form it's absolutely stunning, and I'm all kinds of proud to be a part of it.

Speaking of festivals, Words Like Knives will be screened at Blood at the Beach in Virginia Beach, May 10-12. (It's not yet listed on their Events page, but I expect that'll be updated soon.) It's already garnered a couple of great reviews too, including one over at The Critic's Word that really qualified as one of those surprises that make my day:

Michael Wexler and Valerie Meachum delivered spot on performances as Mr. and Mrs. Price. What I found most impressive was how both actors handled themselves on screen, body language plays a big role to a great performance, and both actors showed a good display of that.

Can hardly ask for more than that!

Finally, I'm over the moon about how Witchfinder is coming together. The rough cut I've seen of it looks amazing, and I'm so proud of the team for realizing this ambitious 17th-century vision on an absolute shoestring. The trailer hit the web this week, and I can't wait to see the finished film.

Over the Misty Mountains and beyond the barricade

In which our Diva has recently spent a number of highly satisfying hours in the dark

'Tis the season for actually getting out to the cinema more often than usual, and with two highly-anticipated adaptations of things near and dear to my heart for many years, this year has been no exception.

First up was The Hobbit, which I'm not too proud to admit I've seen three times. Two of those were in the much-discussed HFR (high frame rate) format, which, while I see where those who dislike it are coming from, I'm going to have to declare myself in favor of. (Though it's interesting that it's the frame rate that's getting all the attention, when I think a lot of the look also comes from the RED-EPIC camera's extremely high resolution.) It took a little getting used to -- as I've been explaining it, my brain spent a good chunk of the prologue switching between interpreting what I was seeing as "video" or "right in front of me" before cementing a new perceptual category -- but by the time Bilbo was unexpectedly accumulating Dwarves in his dining room, I didn't find it obtrusive at all.

Much has been made of it as a vehicle for showing the sweeping vistas of New-Zealand-as-Middle-earth, but I was equally struck by how much it allows the audience to see the finest nuances of an actor's performance. And there are plenty of those to be seen in The Hobbit, from the entire ensemble. The fun part about seeing it more than once was being able to watch all the character stuff going on in the background, and there's plenty to see. Thorin looking out for his nephews, and his nephews (particularly Kili) looking to him for cues on how to behave and whether they're impressing him. Balin keeping a weather eye on his long-grown-up protege. All sorts of other things that make the huge troop of characters distinctive and memorable.

Speaking of capturing performances, of course, Andy Serkis' time covered in little dots was tremendously well spent as always. Without detracting from the tremendous technical and, yes, artistic skill of the team who put Gollum's image on the screen, it's been great over the past several years to see that people understand that their work isn't replacing the actor -- as some doomsayers were predicting for a while there -- but providing a new way to change his appearance, as the artistry of costume designers and makeup artists has done for centuries before them. The technical advances made since the Lord of the Rings trilogy a decade ago have been entirely in the service of all the more faithfully showing us his work, with greater capacity to capture nuances of expression like the movement of tiny muscles around his eyes. Anyone who tries to tell you what he does -- and what we see -- isn't acting? Has no idea what they're talking about.

And yeah, New Zealand is pretty too, and the production design is as gorgeous as ever. Impressive production values don't make a movie good, but they also don't prevent it from having heart, and there's plenty here. The seven-year-old kid who loved the book, and who went on to plunge into the rest when her reading level would allow it, has grown up very happy with what this team has created on screen.

If the adventures of the Company of Thorin had me grinning at the screen for the better part of (three times) three hours, I was just as happy to spend a similar stretch of time mostly crying my eyes out. Though, after some 25 years of familiarity with Les Miserables, I really should have known better than to go with only two measly kleenex in my purse! I ended up clutching a useless sodden ball by the time the barricade was going up. Oops.

A good chunk of that is down to Anne Hathaway's absolutely heartrending Fantine, though again, I was happy with all the performances. I have a quibble here and there with voices, despite having accepted years ago that movie-musical singing is different from musical theatre singing in much the way movie acting is different from theatre acting. And, in much the same way, it's evolving to keep pace with technical developments and audience tastes. But all the characters were right there, newly vivid in many ways as they were illuminated by the perspective of film and the tweaks to the text. Closeups and angles provide opportunties for minor characters -- notably little Eponine and several of the students -- to shine in non-verbal moments that might go unnoticed on stage.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is, it's amazing, they did an amazing job. Not that there was anything wrong with my faith in the future of the movie musical, but I still feel really really good about it now.

I know these are both HUGE movies that don't need any help from me. But sometimes the blockbusters really do have the heart and the art. And this is my blog, and it's the holidays, and I felt like gushing about movies that make me happy.

I hope you're finding things this holiday season that make you happy too.

Overheard at Dunsinane

In which our Diva presents further proof that the higher the body count onstage, the greater the silliness backstage

The Official Macbeth Quote List
GreenMan Theatre Troupe, Fall 2012

Wait, do I come from up-up, or just up?
  -- Galinda Up-Left of the Upper Up-Lefts.

This is the most action I've had all year.
  -- I know.

And she's really a woman?
  -- She's really a woman.
  -- And what is he?
  --  He's a man.

 I'm going to start with lechery.

It sets him on... and it takes him off. There's a child there. I'm sorry.

But I requitted it.
  -- Requited.
  -- Requited... did that too, I believe.

I wanna see that manly readiness.
  -- Come out into the hall.

Uncle Ross! Where are you going? I thought you were staying a week and taking us to Great America!
  -- Great Scotland.
  -- Six Flags Edinburgh.

Nothing like a good bloodcurdling scream.
  -- I don't think I've ever done one of those.

He will teach you how to fall so you don't hurt yourself. Because you've just been stabbed. I'm sorry.

Home fry of treachery!

I feel like I should have a weapon. Even though I don't fight.
  -- You're so violent.
  -- It might make me feel more manly.
  -- So would a sock in your pants.

He's impressed everyone into this army.
  -- Except me. I'm off topping myself.

Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped!
  -- Well, here's a howdy-do.

His k-nell is k-nolled.
  -- Ooh, cannoli?

Three waitresses for the gruel.
  -- It's good stuff.

You're smiling. You're happy. You're king.

I lost one of our children. We have a son/daughter. I'm not sure.

Say goodbye to your chickens.
  -- They're McNuggets, man. Colonel's gonna be happy tonight.

Come be my adopted child. Look, husband, we have another one!
  -- Yes!

You have a throne here, so at some point in this speech you want to sit and... be king.

Good job, honey! Way to get him!
  -- A ghost!

And you're free to paint your story out here. "And you were there! And you were there! It's good to be back in Kansas!"

Thou mayest revenge. Oh. Ohhhh.
  -- Come over here so I can kill you.

Aaaand, fight-fight-fight, fight-fight-fight, die-die-die.

Let me play you the saddest song on the most brutal violin ever.

Last night you were a bench, and tonight Ryan is a chair.

How do you say that to a lady? "Spread your legs a little bit more."

So I hope you've been practicing a good yell. A war cry.
  -- Well, I couldn't on the train.

And remember they make great gifts.
  -- Nothing says "I love you" like a t-shirt from a murder.

If not for the fact that you cut your fingers off when you cut his throat.
  -- Thou'rt the best o' the cutthroats.
  -- Was't not the way?

Knock, knock, never at quiet! Never at quiet. But don't tell me.

So do I go this way to protect them? I want to save my children, but I don't know how.

We hear the scream, beat, and then we see Jimmy.
  -- I can remember that.

Did everyone get their picture taken who wants to?
  -- It's a choice?
  -- Just use a picture of Hugh Jackman for mine.

Ah! That's why you're a bad mother!

The witches will see you now.
  -- Now I'm picturing her like a 50s secretary. "Mistah Macbeth!"

And with my sword I'll prove the lie thou speak'st!
 -- You should probably get a sword.
  -- Macbeth's planning to use the Force.

Poof! And I drop gold coins.

God save the king!
  -- Thank you.

The other attendant went off with the bloody captain, so he cannot be a head-bearer.

Why don't you take the staff and "Hail Macbeth!"
  -- Better stand back, Macbeth. She'll take you out early.

Worthy MacDeath!

He wants the natural touch. He lacks... He's a lousy father.
  -- What? How dare you blaspheme me!

She gets warned twice, and she still doesn't get it.
  -- It's the thought that counts.
  -- I get like a ten-second warning!

He's your favoritest uncle.
  -- He's her only uncle.
  -- That too.

Whither should I fly? I have done no harm.
  -- Aaaahhh!!
  -- Not yet.

I'm just dying to do the scene.
  -- Don't say "dying" about this scene.

Are we eating worms? Om-nom-nom.
  -- I don't like worms. I realize they have a lot of protein, but I don't like worms.

Double, double, toil and trouble! Fire burn and cauldron bubble!
 -- [from corridor] Arooooooo!

Let's take it from that finger.
  -- That finger?
  -- Give him the finger, Grace!

And when he says "horrible sight"... You say "horrible sight," right?
  -- We can only hope.

Good. Excellent. I wanted to point that out right when it happened.
  -- Now I'll never say it like that again.

Witches, try not to get in the way of a sword. Fighters, try not to get in the way of a witch.

And all my children?
  -- They were well on the Red Line when I did see 'em.

I want to start with Act V Scene II, which is when the rebels start to assemble.
  -- You mean the liberators of Scotland.

The cry of women, plural. I scream, you scream.
  -- We all scream for dead queen.

That's all right. They'll remember the porter. That's all I care about.

Let's take it from the bad news.
  -- Your pizza will be delivered late.

That speech soars with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. To quote NBC Wide World of Sports.
  -- In the 70s.

Hey, there's a question. Do I get my own thumb?
  -- We have a thumb. Well, we have four fingers.
  -- Set your thumb in your costume.

The Bears are winning 10-7, if anyone cares.
  -- Oh, you are good.
  -- I'm a full-service AD.

Oh, look at the time. Ding! *heads offstage*

Let's try that one more time, much slower.
  -- All of us?
  -- Well, one of you can't go slow and the rest go full speed.

He's going to go quite a way away from you, and it'll look closer to the audience.
  -- It looks pretty close to me too.

Oh shlave!
  -- Shlave?
  -- Yiddish Macbeth.

He's only mostly dead.
  -- Flllllyyyyyyy gooood Fllleeeaaaaaance...

Oh, the Duncan murder. We just had a murder.
  -- I know! I just can't get enough murder.

I thought he was over there.
  -- No.
  -- I don't know. I've been drinking all night.

Whatever it takes to make you look as good as the rest of us.
  -- How much time have you got?

It is a peerless kinsman.
  -- That's right, I am.

Oops. I just stabbed the ground.

I thought it was Steve.
 -- Uh, Steve Two.
  -- Paging Steve Two.

Let's put the sword in his crotch, shall we?
  -- That's a great plan.

Wow, it looks just like Carl!
  -- You are currently a coconut pirate head.

And his fiend lite queen! 
-- I'm not a fiend. I'm just fiend lite.
  -- She's just misunderstood.
  -- That's right.

Bless you, fair maid. Fair maid?
  -- Not with two kids, she ain't.

I'm going to find a drink of water somewhere. All that killing has made me thirsty.

She's the old witch. I'm trying to make goo-goo eyes at him.
  -- Grace is playing hard to get. Would you like a fan for this?

And all together on that "seek." He suddenly becomes radioactive.
  -- Evil king cooties!

Thy royal father was a most sainted queen. Blah. He's a cross-dresser.
  -- Scotland was a wacky place.

You don't necessarily want to hurt him, but...
  -- I do want to hurt him.
  -- Well, okay.
  -- Character choice made.

I can teach you a little bit to do with the wooden swords.
  -- As long as you don't kill Mommy.
  -- Or each other.
  -- Oh, I don't care about that.

You look like the Grim Reaper. It's a good look for you.

Can we hear your scream back there?
  -- There's no way he caught us. We are fast.

I thought we were doing half speed, is all.
  -- Oh, that is half speed.

Oh, yeah. This is where you punch me in the face.

And now this is where you say your line.
  -- Yo' momma!
  -- I don't think that's the line.

The attendant holds it in case the king needs it.
  -- Yeah, so if we get attacked, you take the sword and --
  -- Run like hell.

We have about 20 minutes to slice off of Act I. And you have the swords to do it.

My children are interchangeable. That's why I had two.

There's a head in there. I'm not going in there. It's too creepy.

You're scaring the witches. That's a good thing.

Your son, my lord, is a little strange.

If we end it there, Macbeth wins. He's crazy, but he wins.

Root of hemlock digg'd in the dark. Sorry, that creeped me out.

Flash of lightning! Sparks fly! It must be a witch's curse!
  -- Amazing special effects!
  -- And then no lights.
  -- Yeah, those aren't the effects we want.

I like killing Ryan too. That's just funny.

You can clean up your own blood!

From where all the dead bodies are. Can I have my dead bodies, please?
  -- Do you want us to lie down?
  -- Yes.

Think of THIS, good friends, but as a thing of custom. I'll check the other line later.

I have a cold, so we can hug.
  -- I probably gave it to you. Sorry.

Because your mother sewed a label right on the hilt that says "Murderer #1."

Come in, without there! *beat* Really, come in, without there!
  -- These doors are thick, my lord.

How convenient! A head-pole holder!

And now we drink all the beers.
  -- I have almost forgot the taste of beers.

Look! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Stan in a cape.

I'm just going to stab Carl in our fight. Be like, "Yo, Duff! I got him!"

Anybody got any mending they need done?
  -- At home.

Sorry. I got entangled in a fertility cult.

Buckets of blood, no waiting!

He is a murderer, after all.
  -- Yeah, I'm gonna murder your whole family in a little while.
  -- That's rude.
  -- There's a recession on. He needs the money.

 

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

Endings and Beginnings

In which our Diva has two of one and one of the other

Ending the First: Final weekend of Macbeth at GreenMan Theatre Troupe! I couldn't have asked for a more amazing experience playing That Scottish Lady, thanks to director David Soria, my marvelous Mackers Carl Zeitler, and too many more people to list even though each and every one of them is thirty-one flavors of awesome. If you're planning to come out this weekend (and I hope you are!), a little box-office birdie tells me Saturday night in particular is filling up, and reservations are recommended for any of the three remaining performances.

Ending the Second: Also in the category of Awesome People I'm Glad To Have Met is the ever-affable Andy, host of the Being Human Cast podcast. I met Andy when we were both on the Being Human discussion panel at Dragon*Con 2010, and have had the privilege of babbling nigh-endlessly about that remarkable example of TV storytelling as guest host on several episodes of the podcast. After some soul-searching, Andy made the tough decision to close the podcast's three-year run with Episode 38, and kindly invited me to join him in a wrap-up discussion of the end of Series 3 and an overview of Series 4. We examine the resolution of Mitchell's tragic arc; take a moment to bid farewell to Daisy, my favorite free-spirited vampire and occasional cosplay alter-ego; give Nina, George, and Annie some well-deserved love; and spend a bit of time pondering where things are going with the newest denizens of Honolulu Heights. If you're a Being Human fan, give it a listen, and let us know what you think!

And a beginning! The moment I get home from post-closing festivities for Macbeth, I'll be packing my set bag to start filming Witchfinder the very next day. After all the detailed prep work, it's finally time for the dark historical world the crew have been building to come alive. I'll bet even my stunt double over there is looking forward to it, and she can't even stand up without a little help from production designer Arianne Clarke and costume designer Alisha Tyler! What a dummy...

An exercise in absurdity

In which our Diva should have known it couldn't possibly be that simple

I should have sent off my entry to the Pre-Raphaelite Society's poetry contest well before today, since I'm now crossing my fingers that it will arrive by the October 31 deadline, but, well, no room in the brain for non-Macbeth things. (I still keep wanting to say that name WITH GREAT DRAMA, Geoffrey Tennant style, but I could never possibly give it quite the flair Paul Gross does.)

Regardless, I expected to make a quick stop at the post office to buy an international money order for the £1.50 entry fee ($2.40 at today's exchange rate) and a 95-cent stamp, drop the letter in the mailbox, and be done with it.

Instead, I discovered that, although I am absolutely positive I remember buying at least one UK-bound money order from the USPS and/or Western Union some 10-12 years ago (before online transactions became the norm for such things), the lady at the post office looked over the available list on her computer several times (and looked under UK, Great Britain and England), then called her supervisor over to confirm that no, they couldn't sell me a money order that could be cashed in the UK. Practically anywhere else (including the British Virgin Islands!), but not jolly old England.

At the Meijer customer service counter (which includes both USPS and Western Union services) the girl couldn't even figure out what I was talking about, and her supervisor (with what I'm fairly certain was a Swedish accent) regretfully confirmed that no, they couldn't help me.

The bank, as is to be expected in this age of electronic everything, was deserted but for half a dozen employees who gathered around trying to think of a way to solve the problem that wouldn't involve a $40 fee for an international draft. They didn't manage it, but I got the feeling it was the most excitement they had all day.

In the end, I pulled £1.50 in coins from the leftovers of last year's trip (having exchanged my remaining paper money at the airport but forgotten the change), taped them to a card, and put everything into a small padded envelope to make it less obvious. Halfway to the (different) post office, I realized that this meant it was now a package and would require a customs declaration. The very sympathetic postal clerk shook her head at my account of the afternoon up to that point, then asked if I had tried a currency exchange. *headdesk* D'oh! Of course not. And it was a little late to think of it now. But it'll definitely be what I try next time.

If I were feeling cleverer, and didn't need to render my house something resembling hygienic ahead of my parents' arrival tomorrow, I would have attempted to render this tale in the style of Lizzie's letter from Nice. It would only be appropriate, after all. Plus ça change...

Yet here's a spot

In which our Diva has discovered a fun new toy

If you've been around this blog for a while, you know I like to create character-inspired playlists to listen to during the process of a show or film. I've played around with various ways to share them here, but somebody finally came up with one where you can upload whatever you want for listeners to stream, and not worry about whether all my more obscure stuff is in a given service's library. Yay!

(And once you're done streaming, perchance you will go and buy a track or three to have for your very own. Because supporting artists is awesome.)

yet here's a spot from divababble on 8tracks Radio.

Screw your courage to the sticking place

In which our Diva's near future includes a lot of handwashing

LADY. MAC. BETH. Really, what else is there to say? *happy actor dance*

GreenMan Theatre Troupe, October 19-November 4, 2012. All the details can be found here.

With rehearsals already underway, I'm happily up to my eyebrows in text and character and all those wonderful Shakespearey things. We have a fantastic cast, with a terrific director, and the show is going to be one not to miss.

I've been involved in three previous productions of the play (including one as director), and have joked for years that I've played practically everyone in it but Lady M. Guess I'll have to find a new joke! Which probably won't be difficult; it's a pretty dependable truism that the higher the body count onstage, the more silliness is generated backstage. ;-)

Hope to see you there!

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?