Hello friends! Here we are. Already back to Thursday. Once again, I have been experiencing a crazy week, so the other content I promised didn’t quite come to fruition. However, Halloween weekend starts tomorrow, so I will have plenty of content next week. Just be patient friends. In the meantime, enjoy more of my past accomplishments.
#38: Have a pen pal in another country
This is one that I am actually currently doing. About two years ago, I joined a website called Pen Pal World where you can meet people all over the world who also want to correspond with someone from a different area. That’s where I met Yeen. She is from the Philippines. We stopped emailing each other about a year ago because we both just got busy and lost touch. But about two weeks ago, she sent me a message out of the blue, and we picked up where we left off. We talk about everyday things, such as our home lives, what we do for a living, our interests, and anything else we think the other might find interesting. I hope to keep communicating with her for a long time.
#42: Be in a play
Anyone who knows me knows that I have done this one many times over. Since I was a kid, I’ve loved acting. I’ve always known it was what I wanted to do. In fact, it is what I studied primarily in college. I even had the extreme privilege of working professionally at the Brownville Village Threatre for two summers. I love the stage so much. When I step into a role, it’s like I get the chance to leave all my problems backstage for a few hours and become someone totally different. Because it would take way too long to list all of the plays I have been in and comment on each one, like I did last week with CAB, I have compiled pictures of some of my favorites.
This was my first leading role at Peru. I played Amy, an anorexic teenager in Eat: It’s Not About Food. This play was a very emotional journey for all involved, and we all grew much closer because of it. And, coolest of all, I received my first Irene Ryan nomination for this role.
This was Mr. Marmalade. It was the production after Eat. I played the promiscuous babysitter. There were only three females in the whole production, so while we were already friends, the three of us grew very close. This picture was taken in the dressing room before opening night.
My Junior year, we did gender reverse version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I played Duchess Orsina (Duke Orsino). This one was unbelievably challenging. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to memorize a three page monologue written by Shakespeare, but it is no walk in the park. It was so difficult in fact, that offstage in between scenes we would look at our scripts to make sure we had the next scene down cold. This is also one of my proudest roles. I had to go through a lot emotionally with this one as well, and I feel like I could have done no better. For this role, I received my second Irene Ryan.
This is from my first year at Brownville. The show was Over The Checkerboard. I was one of the townspeople trying to stop a developer from destroying our town by pretending that the characters in this unpublished manuscript were actual residence of the town. This show was also my first solo costume design.
This was my last show at Peru: Unnecessary Farce. As you can tell, it is an interesting show. I played the mayor’s wife who was secretly the leader of the Scottish Mafia. I got to do some physical acting in this one. At one point, I was flipped by one of the police officers onto my accomplice, the bag-piping assassin.
This was our cast photo from Oh, Fudge my second year at Brownville. I played the owner of a fat farm. At one point, I spontaneously grew a beard on stage. I also had to lie still under a blanket for fifteen minutes every performance. Trying not to fall asleep was the real challenge.
#44: Change My Hairstyle
I am no stranger to this one either. As I said in last week’s throwback, I believe that one of the only things in life that you truly control is your appearance. So anytime that I am going through a rough patch, I change my hair color or length. For a while there, I was dyeing it so much that I couldn’t remember what my natural hair color was. Now it is almost all natural, because the last time I bleached it, it became so brittle that it was breaking off. So no more dyeing for a while.
This was after a very serious break up. I had dyed it black four years earlier for a show we did at Peru. Although none of my friends thought so, I thought the color looked really good on me. So when I broke up with my boyfriend in the middle of my second summer at Brownville, I vowed that the day the season was over, I would go back to black.
This one was after coming to the realization that I have high anxiety and depression. I thought I could use something brighter.
This was shortly after getting my third tattoo. I had been going through the lowest point in my life and I just felt like I had to do something drastic to my appearance. Not my best choice.
This one was after quitting my very stressful job and being unemployed, by choice, for several months while my fiance at the time supported us both. I had an overwhelming urge to do something very edgy. The plan was to dye the tips pink. But then I got my very professional job, so that plan was snuffed.
#45: Learn CPR
When I was a Freshman in high school, I was required to take a Health class. For two weeks, we studied CPR. We practiced on the dummies and everything. At the end of it, we all got little cards saying that we were CPR certified. That certification has since expired, but I still remember what I learned.
Well, I think that was my shortest Throwback so far. But there is an unbelievable amount of memories teeming inside those short paragraphs. I hope you continue to enjoy this series and keep coming back for more. As always, check back here next week for new content. Or, to make life easier on yourself, you could just subscribe and get email notifications every time I post something new. I hope everyone has a safe, ecstatic Halloween. Talk to you soon!
