lobster feast

every year, actors theatre hosts a big fundraising dinner called lobster feast. there's a different theme every year, and it's a fun event--lots of costumes, and lobster. this years theme was the sixties. and in one of the planning meetings, the party planning team asked how can we use and humiliate the apprentices? the answer was dressing us up as sixties icons and putting us to work throughout the evening. the results were hysterical.

featured in these pictures are emily kunkel as ginger from gillian's island, dinah as genie from i dream of genie, jordan as mick jagger, victoria as Q, daniel as andy warhol, and me and peter as sonny and cher.

peace&love,

ellen

new headshots!

last week, a guy named alden ford came down from new york and took all of our headshots so we'd have new, pretty ones in time for humana. and boy, do they look great. a headshot is supposed to look like "you on a good day" and show your personality--you want to look good without looking like just an attractive robot. these are two of my favorites:

look, an article!

an article in the louisville courier-journal about the tens:

click here

the new year

well, here we are, on the other side of the new year. we're at our halfway point of the program. the last big projects that we'll be doing are our ten minute plays (the tens), the end (our humana show), the the new voices festival (plays written by local high schoolers).

we go into tech for the tens this weekend. tech means long hours, snacks, reading, and waiting. and this weekend, it'll be a lot of last minute rehearsing, too. martina bonolis (co-apprentice) and i are in a plays called "that first fall" about two best friends who return from college to find they've drifted apart. it's a dense little play, and martina and i were fortunate enough to work on it with lila neugebauer. lila was a directing intern at actors two years ago, and she's absolutely one of my favorite directors i've ever worked with. she has a great ability to make her actors feel challenged and safe at the same time. she also has this crazy ability to approach a play intellectually and accessibly at the same time. but, she lives in new york. so the week before break, she flew down, we created the play in four days, and now she's coming back to tech to make sure we haven't messed it up too badly. so this weekend will be long. fantastic, but lots of long hours and hard work.

Christmas Carol pictures!

Our first show, a preview, is on Tuesday, and we open on Thursday! These pictures are from dress rehearsal.

this is the whole cast singing joy to the world at the end of the show. i'm standing next to scrooge on the right.

this is the ghost of christmas past with scrooge. lindsay, who plays past, is an acrobat, and she flings herself around the two silks in the picture. it's super cool.

this is the fred party scene. from left to right, lexi (mrs. fred, a former apprentice), devin (on the ground, apprentice), daniel (topper, apprentice), john (fred, equity actor), jordan (on the ground, apprentice), rebecca (my roommate and apprentice), and martina (apprentice).

pictures

here's a link to the pictures from solo mio round 1:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/actorstheatreoflouisville/5196576341/in/set-72157625442535336/

other than me, the apprentices that did their pieces were monica (red jacket and glasses), victoria (bellydancing), jordan (wearing the hat), brandon (with rope), devin (dancing), and daniel (with the balloons).

rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal

Hello!

Last Friday we started rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, and it is so exciting and wonderful to be rehearsing a play! The version here is very similar to the one at the KC Rep, but there's a little more singing, and the narration is a little different. It's lots of fun to be singing so much again--I'm very grateful for all of those years of choir at Shawnee Mission East (thanks for not letting me quit, mom).

The actors in the show are all quite young, in their thirties...I remember everyone at the Rep being much old. But I think that's because I was 12, and everyone over the age of 18 is pretty much 90 from that perspective. They're a great bunch and I"m looking forward to celebrating Christmas with them everyday for the next two months!

xoxo,

ellen