Spot On: AAMCO; Crazy phone; Calibration

Today was to be a very busy day. Last night, I worked a catering gig for a little (very little) extra dough. While there, I missed a call from my agent, but there was no voicemail indicated on my phone. I didn't even see the missed call until I got home. Then, I was frustrated. Because the call came after business hours, I figured that I had missed a last minute audition opportunity for the morning. I wouldn't have been able to do it anyway because I had committed to a driving lesson and an audition for a short film. Rescheduling the film aud would probably not have been a problem, but no dice for that lesson. That would've made the second time in a row I had missed out on something because I was working another job. I rarely do any "outside" work during the week (i.e. 4 or 5 hours), so it seemed cosmically unfair that I would, of course, get those calls or the audition would take place during the only 4 hours of the entire week when I couldn't take it. Two hours after I got the missed call notification, my phone suddenly beeped that I had received a message. It was the freakin' voicemail that went with the phone call from 4 hours earlier! And I'm just now getting that?! Time to shop for a new phone. The audition was for this afternoon, so I was fine. Blood pressure lowered.

This morning, I had to make it from the lesson in Winnetka to the short film audition in Hollywood in just under 30 minutes. I did. While in that audition, I AGAIN missed a call from the agency that the commercial auditions with Craig Colvin had been cancelled. No problem. How weird is the timing on all these calls though? I just wonder if Don thinks I'll never answer my phone again!

The last couple of months in my acting class have been a real challenge for me and were markedly different than my first few months. In the beginning, I had no preconceptions, and took risks in class, having fun and exploring the range of my experience as an actor and a person.

In the last two months, something changed. I found it more difficult to listen in my scenework. Previously, I considered listening one of my strongest traits as an actor/improviser. I found that my ideas and imagination felt constrained, that I had to work so hard to make choices. Then, when I did make choices, they were "safe"...it seemed that I was playing a facsimile of a scene rather than the scene itself. I was frustrating myself, which only fueled the spiral.

Heading back to Atlanta for our JaCKPie show on 12/28/05, I was actually concerned that these issues might affect my performance onstage. I did not know what to expect, and whether I might feel lost or miss important pieces of information that would drive the show. Thankfully, I found that none of this happened. Stepping onstage with Jim again, we jumped right into our zone. We were on top of the suggestion, the information gleaned from our source, the lives of our characters and the threads of our stories.

Shortly after the show, I read the Quality chapter in Nachmanovitch's Free Play again. Incidentally, there's a link to purchase the book on the JaCKPie frontpage. I guess the last time I read it, I was away from my highlighter. So, this time I was ready. What immediately jumped out at me was a section about how quality suffers when we get "pulled off center....pulled away from ourselves." Nachmanovitch basically says that we start focusing on what someone else might want from us or what we think we want ourselves. In my case, I was allowing the styles and choices of other people in my class to affect my own choices (in a negative way). I was trying to be more like X, instead of playing with and accessing more of who I am. As this chapter warns, if you start trying to be more like X, "people will spot it as inauthentic." Spot on. I love this book.

SPOT ON: Finally saw the AAMCO spot tonight while watching Everybody Loves Raymond reruns on the WB. It was funny. That wig looks ridiculous!