This year, I've made a southern belle costume. No one has mentioned throwing any Halloween parties, so as long as my petticoats arrive in time (thanks for mailing them, Mom!), I'll be answering the door for trick-or-treaters this year. I'll buy a huge bag of candy. (Make that two: one for the kids, one for me!) Perhaps I'll wear the costume to work, unless I'm working in receiving that day as it is not practical to wear when slinging boxes of product around!
I got a pumpkin, too. The ones here in Alaska are HUGE! The one I picked out was one of the smaller ones, and it was large by California standards. Must be all that sun during the summertime. I bought one of those pumpkin carving kits with stencils for making neat pictures.
I chose a cat with a crescent moon. I added a few stars because I had all this space on the pumpkin that needed embellishment. In one area, a small chunk broke off because it was too narrow, so I took a darning needle and stuck it back together. (I didn't have any Superglue or toothpicks.)
Here are a couple of pictures:
All lit up:
This one turned out kinda neat looking!
I know for sure now that my dog will try to eat anything. When my back was turned, he bit off the chunk that I had put back together with the needle! He was nibbling on the pumpkin piece when I caught him. I freaked out because he could have swallowed the needle, and I put the pumpkin higher up so he couldn't reach it.
In other news, I've auditioned for the Spitfire Grill here in town and the results are supposed to be posted on the website possibly by Friday. It's only Tuesday and I've checked three times today! I'm so excited, I think I'll bust wide open.
These auditions were different from all the ones I've been to before. Usually the singing is done first (maybe because everyone comes in warmed up to sing?) and then cold readings from the script, learning a few of the songs from the show, that kind of thing.
This one was all individual improv. I'm surprised we didn't do any readings from the script with other people because you can get an idea of how people look together in certain roles and chemistry between actors, etc. Ah, well. It was tons of fun this way.
The first one was pantomime. The first day I did one of a teenage girl who drops her books at school and rips her pants when trying to pick them up. At one point I threw myself against a nearby counter, shimmied along it, then picked up a trash can and held it in front of me.
The second day (when I was there for the whole thing), my pantomime was to be an overweight person trying to pull on a very tight pair of jeans. So I did a lot of rolling around on the floor and hopping up and down, on my feet and my knees!
Then we did interviews. We were to pretend we were at an interview talking about ourselves. We could talk for real or make things up, whatever. But we were given an emotion or state of being to portray. You know, stuff like timid, mean, angry, sexy.
I got "weird". So I said to the director, "Your kind of weird or my kind of weird?"
Anyway, I started doing lots of "weird" stuff, like sitting on the table in the director's face, playing with the assistant director's hair, picking up the chair and offering to fix it, discussing the aliens that abducted me, laughing like a loon and saying, "I'm not insane! THEY are."
When my time was called, I was shaking like a leaf.
We also did conversation. We held a one sided conversation with someone in a given situation. Mine was telling my boyfriend I'm pregnant. So I started telling "him" about this stick that sometimes shows a plus sign and sometimes shows a negative sign. I held it out and after a beat I said, "No, no, see the bar that goes this way, and the other one goes that way, like a plus sign." That got a laugh, the dumb blonde explaining a positive pregnancy test.
We sang last. No one volunteered to go first, so I stepped up. I was going to go last because I don't like forcing people to sing after me and I had no idea what kind of talent there was in this group. They were all marvelous actors. (There were about 10 of us, I think. Two guys, the rest women. A third guy cut and ran in the middle, so we think he changed his mind.)
I chose to sing the last couple of verses of "It's a Privelege to Pee" from Urinetown the Musical. I figured this might be my only opportunity since we were singing a capella and there were no kids present. I gave a bit of the storyline first, since it's not as well known as other musicals. I got a few laughs, but I got my laugh when I hit the final note. There's a chorus that sings along and hits a big "Ahhhhhhh!" at the end. So I hit the top note, way up there, and really loud, too.
Several people were so startled, I saw them jump out of the corner of my eye.
There were no really bad singers here. Everyone could carry a tune pretty well. The older gentleman had a fantastic voice. The younger one had a great voice, too, but he forgot the words part way through. Actually, most people forgot or hesitated somewhere in their song. I helped him out by singing a few words until he caught on and kept going himself. I ran into him at the store after the auditions and he thanked me. I was worried he'd be upset. Some people don't like to be helped! He was a nice guy. I hope I'll get to meet him again.
So now I wait. And wait. And try NOT to bite my nails! As usual, I think it'll come down to who they put in the guy's parts. That's what determines if I get a role at all most of the time. It's been a constant problem. At TED, I was too young because most of the guys were middle aged. When I got old enough for them, suddenly I was too old because the guys were teenagers! I couldn't win!
Well, that's all the news in Heather World. I'm going to go check the theatre website one more time...
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