Theatre and Parenthood: Why I didn’t quit one for the other

So, I made it through tech week! And opened and closed a show! Anatomy of a Hug is now over. And if you missed it, you missed something beautiful.

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A production shot from Anatomy of a Hug. Picture by Brenda Jean Foley

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Blogging: On Not Blogging. (At least until Sunday…)

I’m in tech for Anatomy of a Hug. And Dan and I are still trying to revise and/or write 2 other shows and cast another. So sleep and the blog are taking a back seat. Don’t worry, I’m not throwing my attempt at taking care of myself and breathing out the window, having to put a hiatus on the blogging I had planned for the week is a part of that. But since I’d hate to leave you with barely a paragraph, here’s a quick list of Continue reading

Baking #22: Do you wanna bake a snowman?

IMG_4970My nephew came to visit us yesterday and surprised us by asking for a
blanket, some hot chocolate, and to watch the movie Elf. We live in Phoenix so this seemed a little crazy, but he told us he wanted to pretend it was Christmas so we decided to theme our whole day around Christmas in June. (Since we won’t be watching him in July this made perfect sense.) We were more than happy to accommodate with the movie because Elf is one of our all-time favorites. In fact, I watched Elf while I was in the hospital in labor. That’s how much we love it (and how much I wanted to laugh through my nerves about giving birth…) So we had hot chocolate (or a mocha in my case) and watched the movie and turned on the fans so that bundling up in blankets wouldn’t lead to heat exhaustion and had a great day. Continue reading

How Linklater & Breathing Saved my Marriage

Pericles

Playing Hesperides in the production mentioned in this post… see where she comes, appareled like the spring…

I was introduced to Linklater voice work in the spring of my first year of graduate school. Everyone involved in the MFA production of Pericles needed to take an intensive workshop on it during what would have been our spring break otherwise (I believe our program director suggested that spring break was for “amateurs and undergrads”). This was important because Tina Packer and Dave Demke were directing and assistant directing and both came from Shakespeare & Company where Kristin Linklater’s work is used as a common vocabulary for such techniques as dropping in. I was a little sad that giving up spring break meant giving up some of the plans I’d made with my then boyfriend, now husband (we’d been dating 6 or 7 months at that point and one of our planned outings included wine tasting, which I was very sad to miss) but I was also excited and I had no idea how worth it that experience would be. Continue reading

Anatomy of a Hug and Breathing through the Crazy

A quick update on a few blog posts from earlier this year. Those of you who read my post about being a female theatre artist- I am pleased to invite you posterAofaH_4x6-2to come see The Bridge Initiative’s capstone project of their symposium: Anatomy of a Hug. It runs June 19-21 and we will have the playwright in town from NYC the first two days of the run and a talkback with her the evening of the 20th. It has been a privilege and a new adventure for me to work on this production. As you may have guessed from the “bardolatry” B in this year’s resolutions… I mostly deal with Shakespeare or other classical authors, or even once in a while an “American Classic” which is what I would consider How I Learned to Drive. I have learned a lot tackling a new piece and I feel lucky to do it with such a hard working cast and creative team. Continue reading

Baking # 21 Rosemary Bread

OK, after a month of celebrations and sweet treats, it is time to get back to some more savory baking selections. My brain is a little fried from this week, so finding inspiration for this week’s project was back to tried and true Pinterest searches. After scrolling through a staggering number of sweet breads, I saw a pin for rosemary bread I knew it was the winner. (We were reminded recently how much our family loves rosemary when a friend brought us some rosemary flavored nuts and rosemary crackers and we were instantly wondering where they’d been our whole life!) Continue reading

June’s word of the month: Breathe

Can you believe how FAST the year is flying by? I feel like we’ll blink and it will be December. As we start in on the 6th month of the year, I’m happy to realize I’m right on track with my baking goal of 42 projects in 52 weeks as project #21 is up this week (not sure what that will entail yet…) And if you follow this blog regularly or if you follow me on Facebook, you may have picked up that I’m in a busier than usual season of life right now. My husband and I are juggling a lot of plays all at once plus parenting and usually when this kind of season comes up, my self care disappears slowly or all at once. I put myself last in the long to-do list which means I never get there. Continue reading

Baking #20: Happy Birthday Son, You’re 1!

So, of course I knew that this week’s baking project was going to have to be a cake of some sort for my sweet son’s birthday. But before we get to that, I want to talk about some of the other ways we celebrated, some of which were pretty standard, and some of which might be a little different. Continue reading

When Bliss and Balance Collide

I think everyone, parent or not, struggles with a work/life balance. There seems to be a new article everyday on my Facebook or Pinterest feed either chronicling the problem or claiming to have the magic formula to solve it. The strange convergence of my passions, what brings me bliss, leads me to some less conventional problems and benefits and to a dearth of articles that are actually helpful to my life and schedule when trying to get on top of everything or rearranging the work/life balance. Why is it so tricky? Well… let’s talk about all the categories I fall into… sort of… Continue reading