In case you were wondering...

This is my life right now.

 Playing Jane Porter in Disney's Tarzan is a fabulous distraction from my Master's thesis.

And working at the Hale Centre Theatre is such an exhilarating experience. The production staff is made of artistic geniuses, every single one of them, and the aerialists are pure magic! The things these people do with their bodies! I'm lucky I'm playing Jane because there's NO WAY I could do what the ensemble does. Everyone constantly posts pictures of their fresh bruises, and I'm proud to share that my wrist has started bleeding and callusing from the little aerial adventures Tarzan and I have on the silks. I love how demanding this work is!

It's just about four weeks until the show is up and running. I seriously can't wait.

Oh, and I made the connection yesterday that I'm doing aerials in my Ariel wig. That's pretty special.

Banana.

Writing a play is hard, apparently.

Trust me, I checked.

To make my Modern Musicals 315 class count as a graduate level 515 class, I told Dr. Nelson that I would write a musical.

I'm not sure exactly why I thought that was an appropriate thing to say. I must have still been jet lagged.

"write a musical"!?!?!?

Andrew Lloyd Webber writes musicals (and purchases all of my favorite paintings so I can't see them, I've recently learned). I... I wake up late and and whine to Jacob and pop my zits and eat too many digestives and get love handles and get hangry and fall asleep all over the place. I am lamentably ordinary and am sick of all my clothes and rarely shave my legs and procrastinate everything and don't know how to manage money. I am one big human flaw. I don't write musicals.
But, for what it's worth, I'm trying.

In other news on the theater front, we're having a marvelous time. Jacob has seen more musicals since we've been here than in his entire 32 years combined (I think he saw...two before this. The two he came to see me in).

So, here's the run down on just a sampling of the plays I've seen in Jolly Old London:

There's nothing like seeing the Phantom of the Opera to make you want to lose weight and take voice lessons.

(No pictures, whoops)

There's nothing like seeing Carmen to make you glad you're not a terrible hussy with a death wish.

 It was Jacob's first Opera, and he hated it (we're working on this). But sitting in the Royal Albert Hall alone is a sublime experience (Side note: the Royal Albert Hall is just a quick skip through Kensington Gardens from our flat. !?!?).

This place is BIG.

There's nothing like seeing The Lion King to make you feel not only inflexible, but entirely incapable physically.

 

There's nothing like seeing Wicked to assure you that something, at least, is better in America.

Though Americans, perhaps, go a little insane waiting at the stage door in the freezing rain to meet West End stars .

There's nothing like seeing War Horse to bring back all of your girlhood equine obsessions (including, but not limited to: horseback riding lessons, a Breyer Horse collection, notebooks filled with Learn to Draw Horses attempts, multiple homemade stop animation videos starring Playmobil horses, etc.) and make you practice, incessantly, moving and sounding like a horse. 

Sue me.

And there's absolutely nothing like seeing Les Miserables  to convince you that you should NEVER attempt to write a musical.

 (I joined in their crusade...)

But guess what?

I'm still going to do it. And as terrifying as it is, I actually really like doing it. Every time I run breathlessly to my computer because some dialogue magically worked itself out in my mind or a character's back story writes itself because the character knows more about their life than I do... wow. Those moments are delicious. And a little addicting. And even though I'm beyond self-conscious to let anyone read my soul-baring, nonsensical crap script, I am more fulfilled by actually finally attempting to do this than by most other things.

So I let Jacob read some scenes. I work at the piano where I know everyone can hear, but I just do it anyway. I'm trying to write music. I'm trying to write stories. And even if they turn out as bad as I fear they will and they never speak to a single soul... at least I did what I've always felt, at my deepest depths, that I was meant to do. 

Love, drafts, and more drafts,

Banana

Come to My Garden

When I was very little, I watched this movie over and over, and sometimes it made me weep:

When I as a teensy, tiny bit less little, I loved this book to death:

I spent most of my childhood looking for this door:

 When I was in France this summer I thought I found it. In the sprawling English garden of Fontainebleau Castle, I found a dilapidated door covered in ivy, opening to a magical little garden filled with bits of medieval pillars and things. I was in the middle of having a conniption of the long-forgotten secret that was MINE! ALL MINE! when the gardener came in to look at me strangely, mumble "bonjour" and move the sprinkler.

So, the point is, you should come see this play because the modern world is conspiring against us all and it's impossible to find a real secret garden (trust me, I've scoured Europe), BUT for two hours you can forget all that and watch one of the most beautiful, magical live theatre performances you'll ever see and hear some soul-shaking voices sing some pretty legit/ bad a#$/ glorious music.

Anyway. Monday, Wednesday, Friday through the end of May. You're welcome.

 

type cast?

Why is it exactly that I always play the ill-fated sex symbol?
For example:

 

 Susannah in Joyful Noise back in Hawaii...

 Sibyl Vane in The Picture of Dorian Gray this spring...

And, a week or so ago, I finished being Constance in The Three Musketeers.

Just to name a few.
Well. 

I'd understand if it was just a few times. But I'm all set to play Susannah again this Christmas at the Covey Center (hopefully as a brunette this time). I am honored, of course, but it still makes me wonder...

do directors know something about me that I don't?

You know, Marilyn Monroe said: "Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered."

Not that I'm really any of those things. But in all these plays I'm always the one loved, left, bruised, abused, used, and, frequently, killed. But at least it's because they think I'm pretty...

um.

Hopefully I'm just a good actor? 

Unfortunately, I know that I'm not, really. 

And that I am a little self-destructive in my love habits. And just sort of generally unlucky. And I keep gravitating towards these things that hurt me so bad and then, well, basically kill me.

And sometimes all it takes is a small tidbit of new information. 
And I'm dead.

Oh well. At least I'm pretty.

Pff,

Banana

Drama Queen.

Strangling my dearest Tessabunny in "Joyful Noise" by Tim Slover (2008, BYU-Hawaii)

I've often wondered why I've  been so forcefully drawn to the performing arts since, probably, infancy.

I stomached the servitude inflicted on me by my cruel mother by pretending I was Cosette in "Les Miserables" whenever I was forced to do chores (which, due to my evasive nature and privileged position as baby of the family, wasn't often). 
Out of necessity,  I was once forced to steal my brother's GI Joe in order to cast him as the title role in "The Phantom of the Opera," co-starring Belle (in her Christmas dress, of course) as Christine, Aurora as Meg, and Jasmine as Madame Giry. 
Early childhood tantrums and tragic fits of melodramatic weeping led my family to affectionately sneer that I should be an actress some day.

...
So, does this little hobby/ addiction fill some sort of need for "drama" in my life? (In fact, if you know me at all, you know I don't really need anymore, thank you.) 
Is it merely an excuse to keep playing "dress up"?
Or a way to get back at my big sister for always making me be Mr. Collins or Kitty when she consistently got to be Elizabeth?
 Or, perhaps, a means of escaping my true self by constantly living as someone else?
...
I have no idea.
That's kind of a sad thought, though, isn't it?
And yet, I've always  identified so closely with a line from "Funny Girl" (A life-long beloved musical starring Babs Streisand):

"I'm a much better comic than mathematician

Cause I'm better on stage than at intermission."

Whatever the secret, or the mystical call that inevitably draws all true thespians to their place on stage- their natural habitat, that is- I love it and can't seem to give it up.

This point is illustrated by the fact that even though I try to act grown-up and professional, I get a little giggle in my throat every time I open the "Performer's Entrance" door on my way to rehearsal.  Even though I technically have no job nor school to attend to these days and am, for all intents and purposes, as useless as I've ever been,  I get a little spring in my step whenever I remember that I'm getting paid to flounce around the stage and pine after D'Artagnan and die a lovely little death by poison.

And the little drama queen in me really couldn't be happier. 

So whether I'm running away from something, or desperate for affirmation, or simply just a little girl with a big imagination...I'm doing what I want to do. Pot hole summer or not. And for now...that's a good thing.

Banana

P.S. Sorry about all the soap opera posts lately... I'm a little embarrassed about that. 

 

Oopsies!

Okay, so I've been naughty.

But I promise I'll be back soon! This long hiatus has been plagued with Provo, Utah, clouds, cold weather, and way too much sleeping in. And I just haven't felt up to trying to be witty or observing the world around me in my usual bloggedy way.

Basically I've been a whiney baby.

But the sun is peeking through! My snister and darlingest buddy, Jenabunny, is having a baby (who I already love an insane, auntie-anna, cheek-pinching much), my cutie-pants, poncho-wearing, arabic-speaking, beard-donning boyfriend, Shea, is back from Syria after five months of skype-dating.

I'm in a bad rad book club (I know, I know, I put "bad rad" and "book club" together).

I might just have picked a major.

I'm training for a half marathon (waaah! whhhyyy?).

I have a choir concert this Saturday. [DO come if you're in the vicinity. BYU De Jong Concert Hall, 7:30 pm, march 13th. Tickets through Womenschorus.com It's going to be so great!]

I decided to start performing again. I miss the theatre too much!

And life is good. After all,

"The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung."

-Walt Whitman

love, winter, and a good dose of poetry,

banana

"I am merely an instrument"

"And you, sir, are out of tune!"

"Joyful Noise" by Tim slover
my first time playing a "possibly still syphilitic whore".
And my first university show.
I got to sing and act with dear friends and was redeemed at the end through song and "The Messiah." (the song one and the real one)

And it was good.

love, itchy wigs, and Hallelujah choruses,
Anna

Printemps: "Pirates," puppies, and a party of a semester

I can't believe my freshman year of college is over.

But I can't wait to go home for the summer! And even though it snowed on Monday, I'm confident that the sunny, happy weather that can actually coax me out of bed in the morning is here to stay.

Exciting things that have happened recently:

• Lily Belle Daines, my first and favorite niece

• Hazel the chocolate lab joining the Bryce/Jenalee/ Anna family

• "The Pirates of Penzance" at Center Street Musical Theatre, where Jena and I have been having a little too much fun being floozies. It's sooo nice to be on stage again.
• 
  
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• After 12 or so hours of computer failure and false hope, I finally finished my final broadcast story, and am all set to apply to to the broadcast journalism major here at BYU!

Love, fake hair pieces, and dog hair,
Anna