Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

A Motherless Child With SAG Issues

WEDNESDAY, JULY 06, 2005 "Read You Like a Book" Day Three:

I go to bed at 10:00PM to be awakened at midnight with BART news: BART has not come to a decision on what they want to do regarding striking.

I'm really pissy. I don't want to take a chance on if these people are going to strike or not...so I call up Desoto Cab. and make an appointment for a cab to pick me up and take me to Berkeley at 4:45am to get there at 5:30am.

I wake up at 4:00am. I get online to see that BART is indeed not on strike. But at this point I'm too exhausted to even care and just want to make sure I get there. I get dressed, pack my makeup and some stockings, and the cab picks me up at 4:45 on the dot.

There is no traffic. I get to Berkeley at 5:15. Cab Ride? Forty Bucks. Me asking for this money back? With all the SAG stuff going on...No friggin way.

The main players are there: Bob, Larry and crew. I'm the first actor there. I'm there before Makeup and Wardrobe. I'm just wound up too tight.

I grab coffee and Marianna arrives with a wonderful new makeup artist fresh from The Art School of San Francisco. I get in gear...and sit down for makeup. She is awesome. She makes me look really super good. I look really, really...

Pretty. I have to admit. I looked really pretty. In all this Goth stuff.

I sit in the back and wait. And wait and wait. They bring Ricardo in the store to shoot his first lines of dialogue. I'm going over lines for a while...then settle into joking with staff and actors.

By the time I am up...I have relaxed myself to the point where I am on an actor's computer figuring out how to fix her server pop to jive with the internet connection in the place trying 110 instead of 25.

Bad move.

I get to the set and everyone in there seems a touch on edge. It turns out the reason for the early call is because the store opens at 10am and they got to get these front shots done before the store opens. Bob is trying to keep all the shots down to a minimum.

I just really did not realize what sort of "Minimum" he was talking about. He is looking for two takes.

I did mine in seven.

I feel like a motherless child. I do a take and Bob would tell me to slow it down...I slow it down...it's too theatrical. I speed it up...and it's too fast.

I get so frustrated I just do a completely different take on the whole thing and get angry at the main character. A Jesus Christ. I give you all these Euro Trash DVD's...and you watched NONE of them?

From frustration comes a take Bob seems to like. Motherless, Talentless Child.

We get shots of the two-shot with Dante and me. He explains he tried to watch Argento but got turned off after the second decapitation.

Four takes facing him. Two redo's because they could not get the shot of the poster in...

Final cutaways facing me. I just have the line: You're no fun.

Two takes. Thank God.

I leave pretty dejected with Ricardo. We are pretty stunned to quiet.

Him: Oy.

Me: Yeah

Him: Yeah

Me: I feel like a Motherless Child