Jere-Rigged

Quiet Weekend

Happy Mothers' Day, Everyone!

My parents are traveling, so I didn't go down the shore this weekend to see my mother, but I did phone earlier in the day and they are having a lovely time driving from their place in Florida back to New Jersey.

The two performances of Arabian Nights on Friday and Saturday went well, despite Friday's show being a bit rough due to our having been off for six days. My friend Eric came Friday night and didn't hate it, which was very nice of him.

If you're interested in catching the show, tickets have been available on Play-By-Play, the ticket papering service. You have to be a member (which I'm not), but, if you are, it's been there.

One funny thing happened on Saturday. Well, maybe "funny" is the wrong word. Here's the thing...I developed a particular recurring bit over the course of our rehearsals and my scene partner for the scenes in which I'm doing this bit picked up on it and together we built it into a nice little thing. In fact, our director praised the bit in notes we got just before the opening.

So okay...

Well, we're in one of those scenes on Saturday and I look across the stage and realize that one of my fellow actors had actually stolen my bit. Wow. For those of you who aren't in the business, this is pretty much not done. People have famously gotten fired for stealing bits from their show's more famous headliners. Actors are supposed to come up with their own business unless the director has specifically told them to copy another actor. Problem is that, when this happens, it's the person complaining who tends to look like the bitch, rather than the person who did the stealing.

Hmmm...

Well, lucky for this actor, I don't particularly care. If we had more performances than we do or if this was a higher profile project than it is, I might say something. But it is what it is and I don't care enough to call this person out for doing this.

Truth to tell, my impression is that this actor doesn't have a whole lot of training or experience so I'm choosing to be flattered that he'd want to steal a bit that I created. I have a lot of tools in this particular toolbox and I'm not going create a stink because this person doesn't have as many tools at his disposal as I do.

But I did spend the whole rest of that scene on Saturday thinking "HEY! BITCH STOLE MY BIT!!!"

Biggest Small Town In America

So today was my day for running into random people on the street. I love that about New York. If you live in an area where you drive from place to place in cars instead of walking around, you really miss this aspect of life. And it's fun. And totally random.

I saw Person #1 on 26th Street as I was leaving an audition and heading up to temp job interview. This was a guy I've done some work for in the past it was nice to catch up for two minutes on the sidewalk.

Person #2 was someone who'd been at a show I'd volunteer ushered at on Sunday night and recognized me. He stopped me to talk for a minute as we passed each other on 5th Avenue.

And Person #3 was a friend from Village Light Opera who I ran into on 9th Avenue as I was finally making my way home from all my travels today. We also took a few minutes to catch up on the corner before heading off in opposite directions.

You just don't get this kind of stuff when you're tooling around town in your car. Just one of the many things I love about urban living in general and New York in particular.

What's in the Daily News? I'll Tell You What's In the Daily News!

Hey! It's me!

Check This Out!

This article was a long time in gestation. Originally, I got hooked up with this writer from The New York Daily News by Jeff. I was in the UK and the writer and I spoke on the phone for a good long while about the health care situation in this country and how specifically that related to my life. Then, she sent a free-lance photographer and got some shots of me around Tim's apartment and in the front yard of his building. As you can see, the shot that was used was me in Tim's kitchen.

That was back in February and the story has just made it to the Daily News' website. It's not in the print edition of the paper, but you can't have everything, can you?

Show Information

The performance this afternoon was a bit lower key than last night's, but the audience still seemed to like it. I've been thinking and I've decided to go ahead and post the details. Come if you're interested in seeing me in something. If you're not, no big deal.

Arabian Nights
Michael Chekhov Theatre Company
45th Street Theatre
354 West 45th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Friday, May 9th at 7.00pm
Saturday, May 10th at 3.00pm
Friday, May 16th at 7.00pm
Saturday, May 17th at 3.00pm

Note: There is a another cast that performs the show on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7.00pm during the run. I'm sure they are terrific, but I'm not in the show at those performances.

Admission: $18. (Kids under 10 get in free.)

I've heard that tickets have been available on at least one of the popular papering services that many people here in New York utilize. If you're a member of one of those, it's probably worth checking out to see if the show is listed.

Opening Night

So the play I've been rehearsing opened tonight. Despite a stressful rehearsal period that rivaled any I've endured, we got the thing open.

And it went well. I was pleased. People seemed pleased with my work. So, okay.

I haven't written much about this one here, because the rehearsals have often left me frustrated and stressed, rather than feeling creative and fulfilled. Or creatively fulfilled. I'm sure you know how that goes.

So I've been torn about inviting people to this. It's been available on at least one of the papering services and I've advised at least one friend to pick up a ticket that way if he's interested in checking it out.

Here's the thing...this is more children's theatre. Which is fine. But I don't know anyone with children of the appropriate age, which is, say, 6-10 years old or so. And it's hard for me to ask my friends to pay $18 for children's theatre, me or not. Hence the papering recommendation.

I'm going to think on this and may post the full details tomorrow. In the meantime, if you want the details, drop me a line and I'm happy to provide them.

With All Due Respect, Mr. Porter...I Do.

After a very stressful day at rehearsal, I got to do something that I certainly don't do every day. I went and auditioned to be a contestant on the daytime syndicated version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, which is hosted by Meredith Viera.

Now, I've always loved trivia games and game shows from Tic Tac Dough through Jeopardy! and, of course, Millionaire. But I've never been on one. I auditioned for the annual Jeopardy! Teen Tournement once or twice in my youth, but that's been as far as I've gotten.

So here's how this happened...I usually browse the ads at Craig's List daily for job opportunities and one day I saw an ad advertising that Millionaire was having a round of auditions. So I applied. And I got assigned a spot today. As it turned out, the auditions were held in the cafeteria up at the ABC offices on the Upper West Side, which is only about 10 blocks from my apartment.

I showed up outside ABC and joined the queue where we were all checked in. Then we were told to turn off our cell phones and were led into the ABC cafeteria, which involved having our bags searched by security officers and passing through a metal detector.

We then collected a manila folder and a Scantron form from a cute ABC guy and were assigned a seat at a table. After a run through the directions and a few pointers from the proctor (It pays to guess!...Make sure you're filling in the block on the Scantron that corresponds to the question you're answering!), we got the go ahead to begin.

The test was 30 multiple choice questions to be answered in 10 minutes. Topics ranged from history and geography to pop culture and religion. It was a good mix.

Now, I went to high school in the Scantron era, so I'm pretty much an expert on filling in the little rectangles. I finished this test in about 6 minutes. And I was pretty confident about 90% of my answers. I ended up having to guess at a handful of the questions. So okay.

While they were running our Scantrons through the machine to check them, there were tee shirts given out. I didn't get one. Which is fine. I have enough tee shirts.

And then we got the results. Out of about 60 people in my group, I would say about 15 passed. One of whom...was ME. Whoo-Hoo!! I wasn't really surprised given my confidence with my answers, but it's always nice to get the confirmation, no?

Those of us who'd passed were shuttled to the other side of the cafeteria where we filled out a questionaire with all the usual questions about being related to or knowing anyone who works or ever has worked for any company that has anything to do with the show. There was also a page of "personality" questions where they basically asked "So what's interesting about YOU?" Eh...

Then came the live interview. This was basically five minutes sitting with a member of the staff and talking up the "personality" points. I tried my best to sparkle pretty.

So we'll see how this goes...apparently, I'll be getting a postcard in the next couple of weeks to let me know if I've actually made it into the contestant pool.

Wish me luck!

A Face In The Crowd

Spent another day working as an extra on the film Duplicity today. You may recall that, a couple of weeks ago, I sat in an audience for a scene starring Paul Giamatti. Today, I spent all day on Fifth Avenue between 39th and 40th Streets treking back and forth and forth and back past Clive Owen.

By the way, Clive Owen is just as tall, dark, and handsome in real life as he is in the movies. And I spent most of the day within about 8 feet of the man. Not the worst parts of the day, believe me.

The worst part of the day was that we were outside for most of it and it was pretty cold in New York today. The crew was all dressed in parkas and winter hats. Clive Owen had a parka at the ready whenever he wasn't on the camera. The rest of us non-movie stars had to pretend that it was spring or summer or something and basically freeze our asses off all day. I thought I was being clever and wearing my coat to the set...not so much. The wardrobe people decided that there were too many coats in the scene and I had to carry mine on my arm. Sigh.

By the way, my call this morning was 6.00am. I was there for a grand total of 14 hours. It got old fast. There was a small army of gawkers on Fifth Avenue watching us and I just couldn't figure out the appeal. Sure there was a movie star there. But all he was doing was walking down the street all day. Once you've see in once, what's the attraction?

Oh, hey...I spent some time today discovering the wonderful world of craft services. I had some breakfast (grilled cheese with ham and a side of sausage) and some lunch (peanut butter sandwich), as well as some snacks throughout the day (mostly candy), all free of charge from the production. Yummy.

But I may actually end up on screen in this movie. I'll have to remember to go see it next year when it opens.

Expectoration

Okay, it's been a pretty quiet weekend over here.

On Friday, I got a call for work in the morning from one of my agencies...and then got a callback 30 minutes later as I'm heading out the door that the job was cancelled. Sigh.

Well, okay...sometimes this happens. So what to do then?

I packed up my music and went to three different auditions. And then I went to an interview with a new temp agency. We'll see if this new place can get me more work than the two I've already been working with. The rep I met with seemed to really like me.

Anyhow, earlier in the day, while I was in the midst of running from one audition to another, a guy actually spat on me. No lie. I only wish I was kidding.

He didn't mean to do it. He was just spitting into the street and was not paying a bit of attention to me trying to pass him. He apologized and I gave him the evil eye. It wasn't so bad...I didn't get the brunt of it. But this experience prompted me to share something very important:

Jere's Rules For Spitting In Public

1) Never Never Ever Spit in Public. No one wants to see it and no one wants to hear it. And no one wants to deal with the results.

2) See Rule #1.

3) If you absolutely MUST spit in public, meaning that death by choking is imminent if you do not, never spit onto a non-natural surface like concrete, tile, or any sort of pavement. Again, no one wants to deal with the result of your proclivities.

4) See Rule #1

5) If you're in an urban area and can't find a patch of grass to spit on, wait till you're at the corner and spit into a trash can. Please. Really. Not kidding about this. Seriously.

6) See Rule #1

Thank You.

ADDENDUM: I suspect that the above rules were taught to me as a child by my parents, grandparents, or other adults who were concerned with making certain that I grew up knowing how to behave in public. This can't be THAT unusual, right? Didn't everyone's family address issues of when is and is not an appropriate time and place to spit?