It's Been a While

Good lord, it's been a long time since I posted. It's been a long and trying month of job searching and scheduling insanity, ultimately leading to my current gainful employment: a new job waiting tables. Which, sufficed to say, only means the lunacy and scheduling nightmare has only just begun. Hello shift-switching, restaurant politics and despotic managers*, how I've NOT missed you.

As all this madness was going on, one of my close friends said to me, "Why don't you blog about everything that's going on with your job search? That's a part of working in the theater and living in New York City - why don't you share that?"

"Yes," I said, "But there's nothing INTERESTING about that story. What would I say? I looked for another temp job for a while, but none of the temp agencies I signed up with had any work for me, and then I applied for nearly 50 entry-level administrative jobs, only one of which gave me an interview and I didn't get it so I finally had to face the music and look for another restaurant job and then I got really depressed because the only thing I'm apparently qualified to do is wait tables? That's not a good read."

But if you're curious as to what I've been doing these past few weeks, there it is in a nutshell.

And when I haven't been losing my mind over that small matter of paying rent, here's a few other things I've been up to.

• Signed on to direct Captain Moonbeam and Lynchpin a short play by James Comtois for the Brick Theater's Comic Book Theater Festival. I'm really excited about this. It's a great play and I can't wait to take a crack at it. This is also my first time working with James' theater company, Nosedive Productions, and I've heard nothing but good things about them.
  
  Tickets are already on sale for the show through Ovationtix - get them here.
• Played around with the awesome people from Flux Theatre Ensemble. I've been able to attend a couple Flux Sundays and even had the pleasure of directing a scene for the most recent installment of their Have Another reading series. And oh. my. gosh. What a joy it's been to get to know this group of artists. These are some of the most talented, enthusiastic and nicest theater people I've met in New York City.
• Hosted my old BFF from high school, visiting from Chicago and we had the kind of amazing, exhausting experience that you can only have with someone who's seeing the city for the first time. We wandered around Central Park and the East Village, we ate from food trucks, we got bagels from the best bagel place I know of in the city (that would be Absolute Bagels on 108th and Broadway, thankyouverymuch). We had late-night drinks at the newest neighborhood joint. We took a walking tour of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, stopping for pierogis for lunch, followed by a walking tour of Chinatown, stopping for dim sum for dinner - that day was our cultural dumpling food tour. We went to a concert (PJ Harvey), we went dancing at a gay club. Yes, dancing. At a gay club. Till 3 in the morning. At one point I found myself suddenly and inexplicably hoisted into the air by a half-naked man. It was a great and grueling few days.
• Partook in a Spring holiday marathon. I went to a Passover Seder on Saturday night, only to literally wake up the next day and immediately have an Easter brunch. What time I didn't spend this weekend savoring brisket and matzo ball soup and watching the Prince of Egypt was taken up by desperately cleaning, grocery shopping and preparing pierogis from scratch. The recipe is my grandma's, brought with her parents from Hungary and taught to me when I was 14 years old. And Easter tradition in my family for the simple and accidental reason that my grandma was visiting over Easter when she taught me the recipe. It's a strange tradition, but one that makes me feel specially connected to her, my family, and my heritage - something that, besides this recipe, seems to have all but dissolved like gossamer threads in its eventual journey across the continental U.S.
  
  The spring holiday marathon was an intense 24 hours of celebrations, but it was beautiful and it was spring and oh. I live for weekends like that.
• Saw some pretty sweet things by some Sarah Lawrence alumni. First, a reading of Sharon Is My Name, a new adaptation of The Merchant of Venice by the always-on Daniel Kelly; next, a performance of a lovely play entitled Harlowe by Jennifer Lane (her thesis project for her MFA in playwriting from Columbia, by the way). And most recently, Brick by Brick, a new musical by Ross Wade (book and lyrics) and Nehemiah Luckett (music) based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe - a really strong work; I'm excited to see how it develops from here. It's inspiring to see so many Sarah Lawrence people involved in such great projects.

And that's how I spent my summer vacation.

*It should be noted that all my managers seem perfectly nice so far. But I've been burned before. All I'm sayin'.