Little Grey Girlfriend has a new album out and we’re having a party to celebrate! Join us on Friday night at Arlene’s Grocery (95 Stanton St, NYC) — 7:30 PM — $10 cover to hear the whole album and some old favorites.

Don’t miss it! When else will you get to see my hair in a mohawk?

[See post to listen to audio]

with Jimmy Helms

from left: Daniel Bonthius, Elisabeth Ness, Sarah Fischbeck, Jimmy Helms, Steven Sun, myself, Jenny Lee Anaya, Jan DiPietro

Don’t miss the third and final Choral Chameleon season concert – and my last appearance as a Chameleon – coming up next Sunday April 18th!

An evening of metaphor, fables and fancy — lessons of adult morality told through children’s fairytales and stories. With the WORLD PREMIERE of Such Beautiful Things, an oratorio based on “The Traveling Musicians” by the Brothers Grimm, with music by Jeffrey Parola and libretto by Tony Asaro; as well as Conrad Susa’s Hymns for the Amusement of Children; Irving Fine’s Alice in Wonderland Songs and John Rutter’s Five Childhood Lyrics. This is choral music like you’ve never heard it before!

Sunday 4/18 — 5 PM
Fourth Universalist Society – 76th & Central Park West
Tickets on sale here.

On Easter Sunday 1967, Jim Thompson, an American businessman credited with revitalizing the Thai silk industry, mysteriously disappeared while taking a walk in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. To this day he has not been found.

A Workshop Production
Music by Mark T. Evans / Lyrics by Eric Kubo / Book by Zac Kline
Directed by Blake Bradford with Musical Staging by Clare Cook

February 18, 25, 28 at 8 PM; 19, 20, 26, 27 at 7 PM

at the Wings Theatre, 154 Christopher St

Tickets $20 / $15 students with ID, available here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Well, I got a Kindle for Christmas, and to the chagrin of my inner Luddite, I have been loving this thing on the subway. And 9 novels for $.99 – who can argue?

Later this month I will appear in I Am Jim Thompson, a new musical with music by Mark T. Evans, lyrics by Eric Kubo and book by Zac Kline, directed by Blake Bradford. The show is based on the real Jim Thompson, an American soldier and spy who revitalized the Thai silk industry in the mid-20th century, before disappearing into the jungle in Malaysia. My character is Jim’s friend and companion in Thailand, a British expatriate based on his real friend Connie Mangskau. Jim and Connie, apparently, threw amazing parties – legendary parties – and almost every time I walk onstage it’s with a martini glass and a cigarette.

Research is quite possibly one of my favorite parts of being an actor. When I was young I used to love reading historical fiction, and when I travel, especially to Europe — cities with centuries-old structures — or even cobblestone-filled downtown Manhattan — I find myself walking the streets and imagining another girl, in another time, whose feet touched these same stones. Where was she going? Was she alone – could she be? What was she wearing, what did she smell and hear and see, who had she left behind at home and what circumstances awaited her at her destination? Asking and answering these kinds of questions for a new character – especially one in another place and time – grounds me in a reality often quite different from contemporary New York.

So I’m reading Somerset Maugham so that I can deliver a line about socializing with him in Bangkok. I decided to begin with The Moon and Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin (lots of artists riffing on other artists around these parts!). Through the novel’s protagonist (a writer), Maugham has his own take on the artist’s “research”:

Until long habit has blunted the sensibility, there is something disconcerting to the writer in the instinct which causes him to take an interest in the singularities of human nature so absorbing that his moral sense is powerless against it. He recognises in himself an artistic satisfaction in the contemplation of evil which a little startles him; but sincerity forces him to confess that the disapproval he feels for certain actions is not nearly so strong as his curiosity in their reasons. The character of a scoundrel, logical and complete, has a fascination for his creator which is an outrage to law and order. I expect that Shakespeare devised Iago with a gusto which he never knew when, weaving moonbeams with his fancy, he imagined Desdemona. It may be that in his rogues the writer gratifies instincts deep-rooted in him, which the manners and customs of a civilised world have forced back to the mysterious recesses of his subconscious. In giving to the character of his invention flesh and bones he is giving life to that part of himself which finds no other means of expression. His satisfaction is a sense of liberation.
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

And then he has this to say — through the character of an art dealer in Paris who recognizes the Gauguin character’s genius when the rest of the world finds his paintings hideous:

“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.”

Do you hear the melody of beauty — have you been on the adventure of the artist?

But, being entrenched in his work this week, I can’t avoid it: Sondheim really is genius. His songs are gifts: perfectly packaged, with taste and class, and with new surprises for the singer (and, one hopes, the listener) each time they are opened. As a text-lover, I relish working with his lyrics even before I go to the piano. Each bit of punctuation is carefully selected and has as specific a meaning as it does in Shakespeare, so that the thoughts are practically thought for you and by the time you’ve finished the song you’re not quite sure how you arrived at this new place, but it was entirely logical and right. At least, that’s how “On the Steps of the Palace” feels.

And then what if you are
What a Prince would envision?
Although how can you know
Who you are til you know
What you want, which you don’t?
So then which do you pick:
Where you’re safe, out of sight,
And yourself, but where everything’s wrong?
Or where everything’s right
And you know that you’ll never belong?
…
There’s a lot that’s at stake,
But you’ve stalled long enough
‘Cause you’re still standing stuck
In the stuff on the steps…

I could (and do) analyze this the way I would a Shakespearean monologue: look at the line endings (“know” twice in a row, why the word “envision”, wrong vs right); the alliteration (stake/stalled/still/standing/stuck/stuff/steps); the long run-on lines with no punctuation, and then what feels like a comma after every word. Tonight I’ve been pacing back and forth in my apartment, turning on each punctuation mark and clarifying the thought patterns for myself. The neighbors must think I’m crazy.

This week I am rehearsing for next week’s benefit performance of Into the Woods, funded by a grant from the Sing for Hope Foundation. Though I’ve long wanted to work on Cinderella, and did the show in college (playing the old women: Cinderella’s Mother, Little Red’s Granny, and the Giant), my work is seriously cut out for me. (In fact, I really should be, you know, DOING it instead of writing about it.) I am facing the big monsters of Expectations (but it goes so perfectly in my head!) and learning to let loose while still underprepared – something perfectionists aren’t known for being the best at. But I tote my trusty kaleidoscope to rehearsal with me, and remind myself that I sing songs and tell stories for a living, and babies aren’t dying… and isn’t all this process stuff FUN?

Then on January 31st I will join a host of great singers in an evening premiering the works of Tony Asaro and Rob Shapiro, at the NYU Grad Musical Theatre Writing building on the Lower East Side. I will be premiering a song of Tony’s from one of his musicals-in-progress. Don’t miss it!

Thank you.

Every morning that I wake up and realize I get to do a show (or two) seems to be the best day of my life.   My holidays will be spent performing, doing what I love with a wonderful group of artists… and tonight I will light up the longest night of the year, singing.

I am grateful for my many blessings, including my fabulous friends here in NYC, gainful onstage employment, gainful offstage employment!, wellness, shelter, food, and a seemingly endless list that grows daily.  This year I am also newly aware of the bittersweet, as I will be away from my amazingly supportive family for the first time.

In this season of darkness and a sleeping world, we celebrate with LIGHT and JOY and ABUNDANCE – how fitting!  Happy Holidays – whomever you worship, however you observe – to you and yours.