Art in Heat...

...is the name of a new show opening Saturday at the Warehouse Gallery, as an unofficial kick-off to this year's Capital Fringe Fest.

Get it?!? Art in Heat??? 'Cause it's HOT out?


Be sure to check out stuff by my friend Chris Bishop. He da man.

By the way - seeing the Lobster Boy Revue in the lineup reminds me that a friend of mine swears there's a burlesque subculture here in DC. I'm intrigued. Is this true, and is burlesque "on the rise" in other cities, too? Do tell.

Take an improv class

I've said it before and I'll say it again: improv changed my life. Registration for a new session of Washington Improv Theater (WIT) classes closes this week. Don't miss the boat: sign up now.

Need to get psyched up? Read a sales pitch from an improv evangelist.

It doesn't matter if you think you're funny, or if taking an improv class is the kind of thing you'd "never do." I have been involved with WIT for three years at this point, and I have met everyone from laid-back engineers to cerebral firefighters to bitingly funny nannies. Some of us are quiet and some of us are spazzes. I promise that taking an improv class is an incredible experience no matter who you are or what you do for a living; even if you take one class and never do it again, it will affect how you think about yourself and how you think about life. I am not overstating things. I hope you'll check it out.

Acting Class Diaries, Part 2

...in which the heroine becomes her dog for an hour as part of an exercise in character development. Poor Cosmo - I did not do him justice. Our assignment was to do a pantomime of an animal featuring conflict of some sort, so I decided to be Cosmo trying to get into the kitchen in case any scraps of food fell to the floor. Afterwards my class debated whether I was a dog or a cat.

Sorry, Coz.

Our assignment for Monday is to study a statue and use it as a launch pad for a character. We're also about to choose the characters we'll focus on developing for the rest of the summer session, culminating in a showcase performance in August. My teacher has recommended I play a character named (wait for it) Sally Talley, from a play called Talley's Folly. It actually looks very interesting - a chance for me to work on being vulnerable on stage,which is very difficult for me. I think I come across as very hard-edged and want to learn how to soften.

More to come...

Acting Class Diaries, Part 1

I had my first "Principles of Realism" acting class at the Studio Theatre last night, and it was awesome. I've been looking forward to it for months - per some of my earlier posts, I've been craving training in creating real characters, and based on last night, I think this class is going to be just what the doctor ordered.

Our teacher, Nancy Paris, who's been teaching for "120 years" (her words), emphasized the difference between being and indicating - being sad versus indicating to the audience, "Look, I'm sad." That is exactly the area I want to hone in on. I did a pantomime exercise and sure enough, she called me out on over-indicating things to the audience.

I was looking at the nutritional contents of a carton of yogurt and using my finger as I looked at the calories, then fat content, etc. She asked if I'd really do that, and I realized, no, of course I wouldn't. But I'm so wired to communicate that way - to make sure what I'm expressing gets across clearly. In my work as a Web consultant, part of what I do is help companies make things more obvious: coaching clients to be more clear about the purpose of their Web site, having that translate directly into the content they offer, and having the design clearly indicate (there's that word...) all of the above. But in my acting, I've gotten the feedback before that my characters are more like caricatures - and I think that's because I've been communicating as an actor the way I communicate as a consultant, and that's no good.

Very revved up about this...I'll keep you posted as it moves along.

World Naked Bike Ride comes to DC

Yet another way to express yourself creatively: get naked and go for a bike ride...

48 Hour Film Fest: Closure

In the "way behind the news curve" category, I realized I never reported the results of the 48 Hour Film Fest. You can read the full results here... in Amanda-centric news, "Leon!" won best music, and the WIT film won the audience award and best director. Woot, woot!

My personal goal is to act in another film before the next 48 Hour Film Fest rolls around. I start an acting class at the Studio Theatre next week and am really excited. My homework assignment for the first class is to prepare a pantomime that expresses one of the five senses. Hmm...

Singing

Ok, so I have to put my gleaming editorial integrity aside for a moment and shamelessly promote this video featuring none other than my hubby, aka Jordan (he's the one who isn't in a big raccoon suit - the raccoon would be my friend Josh).

The video was produced for the National Wildlife Federation as part of their Happy Birthday Ranger Rick initiative, and if you sign up for their newsletter, they may commission more of these videos, which means they may hire Jordan again (emphatic cough).

This is actually a very appropriate post for Creative DC in that it provides yet another reminder that we are more than what we do from 9-5. This has come to seem obvious to me, but I still meet so many people struggling to build a life outside of their jobs, as I did for so long. If you met Jordan at a party and asked, as so many of us do in DC, "what do you do?," you might only learn that he's a technologist for an interactive agency. What you wouldn't know is that he's also a singer and improvisor and that he defines himself as much by these passions as he does by his day job - more so, actually.

So the moral of this story is, let's find more interesting questions to ask each other at parties.

...and let's all hire Jordan to sing for us. ;)