Entering December

first off, some updates:
New York was great. Many thanks and kudos to Megan Kilian, Mandy Kiefetz, Renee Racan, and Neil and Lex Howard for their couches, company, and general grooviness. If you're in NYC, I highly recommend Evil Dead: the Musical, Avenue Q, and Putnam County Spelling Bee. Avoid the Producers. Just rent the original movie and consider yourself $70 richer and better off.

I am madly in love with my new apartment and am finally no longer sleeping on the couch. Thanks to Joseph Maurer I was able to get mattress and bookshelves from IKEA and transport a glass bar table and some lumber from the CCP rehearsal room. The murphy bed in the apartment offered absolutely no back support and my first time attempting to sleep in it resulted in constant sleep interruption and back pain. By cannibalizing some of the Manumission set, I was able to give the mattress the firmness it needed and now I'm in heaven. I'm not sure what the neighbors made of me operating a circular saw in my living room, though.

I had a bit of a health scare, but all ended up ok in the end, although I now have another kidney stone to add to my collection. I keep them in a little plastic coffin, because I'm just weird that way.

I didn't get the multimedia producer job at WestEd, but I'm still doing some of that kind of work since there's more work than can be done by one person. I'm also being pulled off of Help Desk and placed into a more full time training position. This is almost as good as the job I was angling for as it will allow me to explore multiple avenues of training, including flash presentations, videos, and live trainings.

Submergency is having its challenges due to trying to compete with holiday parties and some PR missteps. In short, people who see the show are having a great time. Sadly, very few people are seeing it. We had to cancel a show last week since we only had to very nervous people in the audience. I went with Kalina Wilson to a comedy show once and we were the only people in the audience and it is debatable who had a worse time of it, us or the comedians. We set them free, and I hope that we don't have a repeat of that situation this weekend.

I spent most of last weekend in auditions. No, I wasn't going to auditions, I was holding them. I'm directing "Vial", a new play by Nicholas Turner for the Bay Area One Act Festival. As I write this, I'm on my way back from the callbacks. It's a curious process, since there are ten directors angling for actors from the same auditions. It isn't as simple as just picking the people best suited for the roles (as if that's ever simple). I need to select first, second, and third choices and then await the decision of the Festival directors, who take all the directors' and actors' listed preferences and then assign final casting. It's not an ideal process, but given the structure of the event, it's the best way to go about an awkward situation. On the plus side, I've seen many actors I wouldn't normally have known to call in for auditions and I'll be adding their headshots and resumes to my stack for future reference.

I also just agreed to direct for the Darkroom Theatre's Twilight Zone festival, which will take place mere weeks after the BOA's. I just got recruited this weekend, so I only have a vague idea of which episode I'll adapt for the stage. Netflix, here I come.

Radiostar continues to go well, with downloads steadily increasing. I'm particularly pleased with this week's episode, which was one of our first "La Rondes" and one of our first recording sessions with Julie Kurtz and Jennifer Jajeh.

In what amounts to my free time, I've re-taken up Argentine Tango lessons with Warren and Gigi Jensen over at the Lake Merritt Dance Studio. Remington Stone has been joining me, and Suraya Keating will be coming too which makes it all extra fun. I haven't danced tango for a good five years, so it's interesting getting my skills back up to speed.

Other than that, not much is going on.