SIX SQUARED

That's me. Six squared. This is a long one, so if you don't want to read all of this, skip to 5/14.

Much has been happening lately --
5/8 (Mon.) -- a callback audition for Back at Leipzig at Rep Stage. The callback went poorly -- I thought I gave a pretty mediocre audition.
5/9 (Tues.) -- taught the last of a basic acting class at Howard Community College (I took over the last month of the class when the original instructor had to go to NYC for a show. Unfortunately, this means there's no rapport with the class). It was the final presentation of scenes. A few of them did okay, i.e. they remembered all their lines and their blocking (sense of character? Uh, never mind). From there the remaining scenes gradually descended into tragedy. We had a show that evening.
5/10 (Wed.) -- Toured the White House (the cast received an invitation from the "Office of the First Lady"). Well, just of the White House -- the East Wing, a couple of floors. Saw the Blue Room, the Red Room, the Vermillion Room, the Green Room, a couple of other rooms, lots of paintings of past Presidents, First Ladies, relations, other influential folks, lots of antique furniture, pictures of Presidents with their dogs, a picture of George Bush (I) with the Queen of England and Angela Landsbury. It was all okay, but oddly, not as spectacular of a tour as you might think, but now I can say I went to the White House by invitation. Another performance that evening.
5/11 (Thurs.) -- Two shows, noon and 7:30. Between shows, I graded stuff from the class (wee) and had a brief nap and looked over lines for industrial. Got home at 11:30 PM, which is normal.
5/12 (Fri.) -- Got up at 6AM, drove into Baltimore, filmed an industrial (for Sylvan Learning Center) for two hours, which was delightfully quick. We used teleprompters. So when I was talking to Todd (the actor playing the "Sylvan representative"), I was actually looking over his shoulder at a screen that had the script on it (Supposedly, the audience never knows this, because of the angle of the camera). It's wierd trying to respond to someone that not directly looking at. Actually, this was kinda fun, since I'd never done it before. Evening performance -- Andrew, who plays James (one of the brothers), was out with a hurt back, so (dominoes) three understudies went in. We eventually found out that he has a bulging disk in the lumbar region. He'll be out for the remainder of the run, which is a shame. Welcome to the magical world of theatre.
5/13 (Sat.) -- My dad, my stepmom Pat, and my little brother Matthew came out. We had lunch in Historic Ellicott City, and they and Jenny saw the show that evening. There were a lot of hiccups in that show, but most went unnoticed by the audience, and the relations had a very good time.
5/14 (Sun.) -- IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!!! 36, aka (for the math geeks) 6 squared aka 3 squared x 2 squared. For the more spiritually (?) inclined, this is the year of the Dog (that's me), and 3+6 = 9 = my "life number." This all means that great things should be happening for me RIGHT NOW. Right? We had two shows today. It's a good thing I like my work -- I actually had a very fun day, even though I have a bug in my system that's playing havoc with my voice.
5/15 (today) -- I have a callback audition in an hour and a half. No time for proofreading, so please excuse the typos. Gotta go!