Fish Gotta Swim
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
Diving is exhilarating--you take that leap into the air and for a few seconds, oh, you're flying. If you don't organize your entry into the water properly, though, you can get smacked hard. So you focus your intentions on exactly where and how you want to enter the water, you summon your body to perform its task, and you see yourself in your mind's eye slipping effortlessly into the water with barely a splash.
Swimming is glorious, too, the way gravity loses its oppressive hold on you for a while, and you feel an exquisite serenity just floating there. Below the surface, you cut through the water like an elegant knife. Swimming laps, on the other hand, takes stamina, muscle, breath, grit. It's not quite fun until, after much practice, you fall into a rhythm and your body takes over. It knows what to do, and all you have to do is observe and allow.
Since launching this website and diving in to the wider acting world, I have floated effortlessly, I have paddled aimlessly, I have smacked my head against the hard surface, I have glided like a cool, confident knife, and I have swum some laps, let me tell you. I have also swum with some pretty wonderful fish and worked on some cool projects, which lets me know that I'm doing the right thing. I feel at home in the water, and I could swim for miles and miles. Maybe not to Cuba. But never say never.
Here are a few things I've done:
- I co-starred in a single-camera drama pilot produced by the USC School of Cinematic Arts called "The Comeback Kid," about a young pharmaceutical rep who becomes addicted to her product and ends up moving back home with her mom (that would be me) in order to get straight. It shot on weekends from November 2014 through March 2015, both on location (the "Desperate Housewives" set at Universal), and in the gorgeous soundstages at USC. The directors were Angie Browne, Jake Orthwein and Clovis Ong. It was a talented bunch of people, from the crew to my fellow actors. Really proud to have been a part of it.
- I shot a 2-character short film called "Hair," about a teenaged girl struggling with her mom over finding her own identity. February 2015. Directed by Juliet Devette.
- Very proud to have been a part of a gorgeous short film called "The Moment I Was Alone," written and directed by Kellen Gibbs. It's the story of a young girl who gets separated from her mother on a crowded street--and the world freezes. I play the girl as a middle-aged woman who returns to the frozen street scene to confront her unreachable, unknowable mother. It's a beautiful, heartbreaking story. Shot on the back lot at MBS Studios, June 2015. Currently in post-production.
- On the Critical Mass Performance Group front, I spent 2 weeks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with select members of the company, from March 24-June 7. We were invited by Joseph Haj to incubate a new work at PlayMakers Rep as part of a 3-year Mellon Foundation grant. We delved in to the subject of Privacy, and met with various professors from the University of North Carolina, who shared their expertise with us in the areas of privacy law, cyber security and theology. At the end of our sojourn, we presented a 40-minute excerpt to an invited audience of 50 people. We hope to complete the piece in 2016 and present it in the first half of 2017.
In the spaces between the work, I vacillate between periods of pursuing the Biz and episodes of lassitude, which is the age-old struggle of any artist, I suppose. My mother also suffered a stroke on March 10th and I've been her primary caretaker since then, which has been my honor to do for her. Life, as always, is a constant unfolding of doing, being, knowing, learning and becoming.
And, of course...
Swimming.