Second Blog Post

Hello, blog. I hope you are all well.

POST-MORTEM.

Fun Home is over and I have all the typical post-break-up symptoms: it’s harder to get out of bed in the morning, everything reminds me of them, and I’ve been restlessly going on cheap dates (self-tape auditions for unpaid projects).

Fun Home has been very special to me since I first read the graphic novel in my 11th grade English class. A few weeks after I’d been cast, I wrote to my former English teacher, who attended our opening night, and explained that Fun Home fundamentally changed my life—four years before I’d come out as a lesbian. I wrote to him: “Fun Home offered me assurance that everything would turn out OK, and I felt seen in a way that I hadn’t before in literature.” I also told him how the New York Times video that we were assigned to watch before reading the graphic novel—which I watched fifteen times, the least—deeply affected me; I wrote that I “was really impacted by seeing a new way of being a woman, and their happiness and authenticity was empowering to me.” I’ll link the video below.

Thank you to all the friends, family, fans, faculty, and strangers who came to see the show. I was so thrilled to see so many faces in the audience each night. Thank you for coming and supporting us.

I also am immensely grateful for the entire Fun Home team. Assembling this beautiful show reminds me of my favorite Bible verse: “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, ‘remove hence to yonder place,’ and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:20). Our faith in this project allowed us to create something beautiful and meaningful.

The New York Times video I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/13/t-magazine/butch-stud-lesbian.html

UPDATES.

I am graduating this week! I feel like I just moved to New York the other day, but it was actually almost four whole years ago. I am graduating with a BFA in Drama from The Tisch School of the Arts and The Stella Adler Studio of Acting with a minor in Gender in Sexuality Studies, Honors in Theater Studies, and the Founders’ Day Award. I was a member of the NYU Mixtapes, and I studied abroad for a semester in Athens, Greece. I came out as a lesbian, became vegan, and joined the church. I met some of my best friends in the world and fell in love with an incredibly smart, funny, kind, talented, and beautiful woman—who is moving into my apartment in July!

I’ve been a student for so long, so of course I’m terrified to be… not a student—something else. I suppose that that sinister “something else” contains many possibilities, and that’s exciting—and I am excited—, but also scary. For now, I just have a couple of short-term projects coming up in the next month: a musical workshop and a commercial voice-over gig. I’m set with my part-time restaurant gig and my babysitting gig. I’m on the prowl for an agent and a new theatrical project. I’m auditioning, I’m emailing people, and I’m getting on the train.