So about me....

I am currently in my third year attending UAF and working towards a double major in Theatre performance and English with a minor in French.  

Directing Credits:

I am currently directing "Back to Normal" for SDA's 2008 Famous for Fifteen Playwriting festival.  Previously I have directed "The Vagina Monologues" and Dave Hunsaker's "To Reign in Hell" as well as a few student written plays in high school.  I hope to direct a dark version of "Midsummer's night dream"  for SDA's "Winter Shorts" in the near future.

Acting Credits:

I was last seen in FST's production of Tennessee William's "Camino Real" playing Esmerelda, the Gypsy's daughter.  Previous roles include the following: Julia in ThrUAF's "2 Gents" / Madge in "Picnic" / Woman in "PowerLunch" / Lilith and Persephone in "To Reign in Hell" / Dashenka in "Four Farces and a Funeral" / The RedHead in "The LoveTalker" / Rosencrantz in "Hamlet"

I am also a founding member and performer in the Groundsquirrel Improv Comedy Troupe. 

I am particularly interested in movement as an art form both on-stage and off.  I currently practice yoga and have done so for a number of years.  I dance Butoh both alone and with others on campus.  I have experience in African dance, fencing, Kali Pekiti-Tirsia (a filipino martial art), ballet, jazz, and modern dance, as well as contra dance and folk dancing.

I performed in "Cacophony" a butoh piece for winter shorts as well as choreographing and performing in "Huis Clos" the Butoh mirror of the recent TheatreUAF production of "No Exit."  I also co-choreographed and performed in the movement portion of last years "Oleanna."

I have taken Beginning Acting, Acting Styles, Advanced Acting, Movement for the Actor, and Voice and Diction from Carrie Baker and Intermediate Acting from Anatoly Antohin at TheatreUAF.

Awards:
Best Light Board Operator on a Mainstage Show - 2007 Drama Banquet Awards
Best Actress - 2006 UAF Film Fest
Best Supporting Actress - “Four Farces and a Funeral” - 2006 Drama Banquet Awards

My midterm scene is a portion of Act 3 scene 1 from "Hamlet" between Hamlet and Ophelia

Notes:

Reasons we know an abuser's behaviors are not about anger and rage:

• He does not batter other individuals - the boss who does not give him time off or the gas station attendant that spills gas down the side of his car. He waits until there are no witnesses and abuses the person he says he loves.
• If you ask an abused woman, "can he stop when the phone rings or the police come to the door?" She will say "yes". Most often when the police show up, he is looking calm, cool and collected and she is the one who may look hysterical. If he were truly "out of control" he would not be able to stop himself when it is to his advantage to do so.
• The abuser very often escalates from pushing and shoving to hitting in places where the bruises and marks will not show. If he were "out of control" or "in a rage" he would not be able to direct or limit where his kicks or punches land.

 Point 2 is very interesting here... when does he stop?  moment of recognition of being spied on? 

Spousal abuse and battery are used for one purpose: to gain and maintain total control over the victim. In addition to physical violence, abusers use the following tactics to exert power over their wives or partners:

• Dominance — Abusive individuals need to feel in charge of the relationship. They will make decisions for you and the family, tell you what to do, and expect you to obey without question. Your abuser may treat you like a servant, child, or even as his possession.
• Humiliation — An abuser will do everything he can to make you feel bad about yourself, or defective in some way. After all, if you believe you're worthless and that no one else will want you, you're less likely to leave. Insults, name-calling, shaming, and public put-downs are all weapons of abuse designed to erode your self-esteem and make you feel powerless.
• Isolation — In order to increase your dependence on him, an abusive partner will cut you off from the outside world. He may keep you from seeing family or friends, or even prevent you from going to work or school. You may have to ask permission to do anything, go anywhere, or see anyone. Source: Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, MN
• Threats — Abusers commonly use threats to keep their victims from leaving or to scare them into dropping charges. Your abuser may threaten to hurt or kill you, your children, other family members, or even pets. He may also threaten to commit suicide, file false charges against you, or report you to child services.
• Intimidation — Your abuser may use a variety of intimation tactics designed to scare you into submission. Such tactics include making threatening looks or gestures, smashing things in front of you, destroying property, hurting your pets, or putting weapons on display. The clear message is that if you don't obey, there will be violent consequences.
• Denial and blame — Abusers are very good at making excuses for the inexcusable. They will blame their abusive and violent behavior on a bad childhood, a bad day, and even on the victims of their abuse. Your abuser may minimize the abuse or deny that it occurred. He will commonly shift the responsibility onto you: Somehow, his violence and abuse is your fault.

Emotional or psychological abuse can be verbal or nonverbal. Its aim is to chip away at your feelings of self-worth and independence. If you’re the victim of emotional abuse, you may feel that there is no way out of the relationship, or that without your abusive partner you have nothing. Emotional abuse includes verbal abuse such as yelling, name-calling, blaming, and shaming. Isolation, intimidation, and controlling behavior also fall under emotional abuse. Additionally, abusers who use emotional or psychological abuse often throw in threats of physical violence.

You may think that physical abuse is far worse than emotional abuse, since physical violence can send you to the hospital and leave you with scars. But, the scars of emotional abuse are very real, and they run deep. In fact, emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse—sometimes even more so. Furthermore, emotional abuse usually worsens over time, often escalating to physical battery.

 

The popular conciousness of people living in arctic regions like Fairbanks holds the reality of people 'going crazy' in the winter

as a fact.  Modern science backs this up through research on light deprivation and isolation.

By setting this scene in early spring in fairbanks I can capitalize on this, allowing these factors to help explain the murders and deceptions in the play's recent past as well as Hamlet's inability to enact his revenge.  

There is also the common place occurence of couples being together through the winter, keeping each other warm, and then breaking up with the liberation of spring.  This is Hamlet's choice/mindset while Ophelia finds herself pregnant as a natural effect of the intimate winter.

In this scene Hamlet should have a definite personal space that Ophelia only enters tentatively and by invitation while he is constantly within hers.

The script with my notes in CAPS follows:

 

OPH. ENTERS THROUGH DOOR UR, VERY TENTATIVELY, STEELING HER COURAGE AND SCARED 

HAMLET (TO SELF, SITTING IN CHAIR DL)
--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
OPHELIA (ASKING PERMISSION TO ENTER HIS SPACE)
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
HAMLET
I humbly thank you; well, well, well. GIVING HER PERMISSION
OPHELIA TAKING OFF RING FROM RING FINGER OF LEFT HAND AND A BRACELET
My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them. (GIVES HIM RING AND BRACELET
HAMLET
No, not I;
I never gave you aught. THROWS THEM IN HER FACE
OPHELIA SCRABBLING ON GROUND TO COLLECT JEWELRY
My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord. OFFERS THEM TO HIM IN HER HAND
HAMLET SMACKS HER HAND ASIDE, SPILLING TOKEN ON THE FLOOR
Ha, ha! are you honest? -TOUCHING/CARRESSING BELLY THROUGH THIS NEXT SECTION, AT TIMES BEHIND HER WITH ARMS AROUND HER RESTING ON BELLY
OPHELIA
My lord?
HAMLET
Are you fair?
OPHELIA
What means your lordship?
HAMLET
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?
HAMLET IN THIS SPEECH, PHYSICALLY THREATENING, MOVING IN AS TO KISS.
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof. GETS TO A BREATH AWAY FROM A KISS AND BACKHANDS HER, KNOCKING HER ONTO THE FLOOR I did love you once.
OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET VOCALLY DRIPPING HONEY SWEET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
it: I loved you not.
OPHELIA
I was the more deceived.
HAMLET PHYSICALLY THREATENING OVER HER FROM STANDING AND MOVE INTO STRADDLE BY ##
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven?## We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. //BEAT// LOOK TO HIDDEN POL UC
Where's your father?
OPHELIA 

//BEAT// LOOK TO POL UC, LOOK BACK TO HAMLET
At home, my lord.
HAMLET SPRINGS UP, DIRECTING LINE TO POL
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.
OPHELIA STILL ON THE FLOOR, TO GOD
O, help him, you sweet heavens!
HAMLET HELPS OPHELIA UP VERY GENTLY AT FIRST AND GRADUALLY MORPHING INTO SEVERE VIOLENCE
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them.SHOVES HER AGAINST THE DOOR To a nunnery, go,
and quickly too. Farewell.
OPHELIA
O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET GRABS HER WRISTS ABOVE HER HEAD AND HOLDS HER AGAINST DOOR
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
has given you one face, and you make yourselves
another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
those that are married already, all but one, shall
live; the rest shall keep as they are.STILL HOLDING WRISTS, SWINGS HER AROUND TO CENTER AND LETS GO, OPHELIA FALLS IN A HEAP To a
nunnery, go.
Exit THROUGH DOOR

OPHELIA GRIEF STRICKEN, CRAWLS TO TOKENS LYING ON THE FLOOR, GATHERS THEM UP AND SLOWLY MAKES HER WAY TO HAMLET'S CHAIR.
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

FINAL SCENE:

 

For my final scene I have chosen to work with a portion of Tennessee William's "Outcry."  It is a show that I have been rolling around in the back of my head as a possible artistic project for a few years now.  It is far to long to be presented in a "Shorts" format, so I don't know when/if I will get the chance to actually produce it.  So I will work on it here in Directing class.  

"Outcry" deals with the intersection between life and art, memory and truth, the subconcious and the stage.  Through distortion, it explores the concept of the performer and performance, delving into the question of "what is theatre?"  One of his last plays, it has never had a commercially sucessfull staging, but I would argue that it is one of the better things Williams ever wrote.  

I am still trying to pin down the exact segment I want to work with for class, I really just want to do the whole play, but I know that's a wee bit ambitious for class!  Finding a segment that deals with what I think is the essence of the play is being a bit hard to carve out exactly.  But I'll get it figured out and bring it to class tomorrow!

Do you have any idea how long it took to type this script???  So this is the segment of the show I want to work on.  Depending on time I may cut the portion before the line through the page.  I'd like to keep it as is though.

"Outcry" is basically a version of Actor's Nightmare.  Clare and Felice, a brother -sister acting team, are abandoned by the rest of their troupe in the middle of nowhere.  The show must go on, so they start a performance of the two character play.  Its a play they have written about their past and never been able to perform through to the end.  Since the characters they play are themselves, the lines between actor and character within the script are blurred.  I would like to take this one step further and blurr the lines between the actor (craig brookes and anna gagne-hawes)  and role (Clare and Felice) and character (Clare and Felice).  

My actors will have scripts in their hands through the performance, as though it is really a rehearsal.  Lines that are obviously the fictional Clare or Felice talking about the performance they are in will be read from the script while other lines that are obviously the theatrical character Clare or Felice in the context of the two character play will be delivered as though they are not scripted at all.  

The set for the two character play is not complete.  I have yet to decide if my set will be just a bare black box style with every thing mimed, or will have minimal dressings: sofa or pillows and door.

 

There are two basic versions of each character:  Real Clare and Real Felice and Scripted Clare and Scripted Felice.  The first pair are brother and sister who are actors.  the second pair are the characters they play in the Two Character Play.  Scripted Clare is a version of Felice played by his sister.  Scripted Felice is a version of Clare played by her brother.

There are # main modes of performance 1. Real Clare/Felice reading from script  2. Real Clare/Felice speaking 3. Scripted Clare/Felice reading from script  4. Scripted Clare/Felice speaking

There should be an obvious stylistic difference betwen those portions that are READ (shown in bold) and those that are SPOKEN (shown in Italics)

Also obvious stylistic difference between REAL(shown in blue) and SCRIPTED (shown in red) character -shown in accents.

Also obvious difference between REAL (shown in arial font) and SCRIPTED (shown in courier) lines.

C: Didn’t you say that you went out today?

F: Yes, You saw me come in.

C: I didn’t see you go out.

F: When you see somebody come in you know he’s been out.

C: How far outside did you go?  Past the sunflowers, or – ?

F: I went out to the gate and you know what I noticed?     

C; Some thing that scared you back in?

F: No, what I saw didn’t scare me, but it – it startled me, though.  It was-

C: What?

F: Clare.

C: What?

F: (stage whisper) You know the Two Character Play.

C; (stage whisper) The telegram is still on the set.

F: Clare, there wasn’t, there isn’t a telegram in the Two Character Play.

C: Then take it off the sofa where I can see it.  When you see a thing, you can’t think it doesn’t exist.

[felice picks up, crumples, throws out window]
F: There now, it never existed, it was just a moment of panic.

C: What a convenient way to dispose of a panicky moment!

F: Dismissed completely, like that!  And now I’ll tell you what I saw in the yard when I went out.  

C: Yes, do that! Do, please?

F: I saw a sunflower out there that’s grown as tall as the house.  

C: Felice you know that’s not so!

F: Go out and see for yourself.  Or just look outside the window, its in the front yard on this side.

C: The front yard?  Now I know you’re fooling.

F: Oh, no, you don’t or you’d go look out the window.  Its shot up quick as Jack’s beanstalk, and its so gold, so brilliant that it  - seems to be shouting sensational things about us.  This two headed sunflower taller than a two story house which is still inhabited by a – recluse brother and sister who never go out anymore...

C: Its such a long afternoon...

F:Its summer, which is our season, but after the after noon, we have to remember there are unexpected collions in an unlighted house, and not always only with – furniture and – walls...

C: Call it the poem of two and dark as –

F: Our blood?

C: Yes, why don’t you say it? Abnormality! – Say it! //  Now – lets close the child’s eye and light candles...

F: There’s no such line in the script.

C: (smiles) Tant pire che pecatto.  Meaning too bad.  

F: (breaks into desperate laughter)

C: What has struck you as so funny?

F: Madness has a funny side to it, Clare. – And we can’t turn back into children in public view.
 

C: That’s my line, not yours.

F: (continues laughing, suddenly sober) I haven’t told you something you’ll have to know.

C: You’re jumping a page.

F (stares at her blankly)

C: (solicitous) Have you dried up, Felice? (leads him to couch, sits him down)  Lean back, breathe quietly.  I’ll take it.  From where?
(pause)

F: When father gave up his –

C: - when father gave up his equipment, his psychic readings and astrological predictions, a few days before the un- inexplicable – accident!  - in the house – well, he didn’t give them up exactly.  

F: No, not exactly by choice.

C: Mother had locked up his equipment.  He became very quiet.  Except when she ordered him to cut down the sacred flowers in front of the house and said if he didn’t do it, she would.

F: Yes,  Mother, Regina made several threats of emasculation to –

C: “You cut them down or I will” (then diff. voice) “Do that if you dare”

F: And she didn’t. and he –

C: Was restlessly quiet.  Sat almost continually where you’re sitting and stared at that threadbare rose in the carpet center and it seemed to smoulder, yes, that rose seemed to smoulder like his eyes and yours, and when a carpet catches fire in a wooden house, the house will catch fire too.  Felice, I swear that this is a house made of wood and that rose is smouldering, now!  And cloth and wood are two inflammable things, your eyes make three!

F: No, four!  I’m not a one eyed Cyclops!  And adding your eyes makes six!  Line!

C: Didn’t you tell me you’d thought of something we had to do today?

F: - yes, its something we can’t put off any longer.  

C: The letter of protest to the –

F: No, no, letters of protest are barely even opened, no, what we must do
today is go out of the house.  

C: To some particular place, or –

F: To Grossman;s market.

C: There!?

F: Yes,  there.

C: We tried that before and turned back.

F: We didn’t have a strong enough reason, and it wasn’t such a favorable afternoon.  

C: This afternoon is - ?  

F: Much more favorable.  And I simply know that its necessary for us to go to Grossman’s Market today since – I have kept this from you, but sometimes the postman still comes through the barricade of sunflowers, and that he did some days ago with a notification that no more –

C: - deliveries?

F: will be delivered to the steps of –

C: I knew.  Payment of costlies has been long – overdue.

F: We’re going to enter Grossman’s Market today like a pair of –

C: Prospersous paying customers?

F: Yes, with excellent credit!

C: (at fast pace)  But we’ve been informed by the –

F: (at fast pace) ACME insurance company

C: (at fast pace) Yes,  they notified us, that courtesy they did offer, and I’m sure that Grossman knows it , that the insurance money – is – what’s the word?  confiscated?

F: (at fast pace)  Forfeited.

C: (at fast pace)  Yes, the payment of the insurance payment is forfeited in the – what is the word?

F: (at fast pace)  Event.

C: (at fast pace) Yes, in the event of a man – (she stops, presses fist to mouth)

F: (at fast pace) In the event of a man killing his wife, then himself, and–

C: forgetting his children.

F: That what’s called a legal technicality...

C: What do you know about anything legal, Felice>?  I’m not impressed by your pose of-

F: I know there are situations in which legal technicalities have to be,  to be disregarded in the interest of human, human  -

C: I’m afraid you underesteem the, the huge inhumanlessness of a company called the ACME.  Why, they wrote only three sentences to us in reply to the 12 page appeal that we wrote and re wrote for a week.

F: It was a mistake to appeal, we should have demanded.

C: And you should have taken the letter to the post office instead of putting it on the mailbox for the ancient postman or for the wind to collect it.

F: I put a rock on the note to postman on the letter to the – Will you stop driving me mad?  The ACME wouldn’t have answered with even 3 sentences if they hadn’t received the 12 page appeal – and – when terrible accidents happen, details get confused.  Now, will you listen to me?

C: Your voice is coming out of your voice box clearly.

F: We must say that what we saw, there was only us to see, and what we saw was Mother with the revolver, first killing father and then herself, and

C: A simple lie is one thing, but the absolute opposite of the truth is another.  

F: (wildly) What’s the truth in pieces of metal exploding from the hand of a man driven mad by – !

C: Sometimes our fear is...

F: Our private badge of ...

C: courage....

F: Right!  The door is open.  Are we going out?

C: See if there are people on the street.

F: Of course there are, there are always people on the streets.  That’s what streets are made for,  for people walking on them.

C: I mean those boys.  You know those vicious boys that – You heard them too. You were right beside me.

F: I was right beside you and  I heard nothing but ordinary boy’s talk.  

[at lightning pace over lapping through the following]
C: They were staring and grinning at me and spelling out a –
F: You said they were spelling out an obscene word at you
C: Yes. An obscene word, the same obscene word that somebody scrawled on our back fence.
F: Yes, you told me that too.  I looked at the back fence and nothing was scrawled on it, Clare.
C: If you heard nothing that last time we went out, why wouldn’t you go on alone to the grocery store?  Why did you run back with me to the house.
F: You were panicky.  I was scared what you might do.
C: What did you think I might do?
F: What father and mother did when –
C: Stop here we can’t go on –
F: Go on!
C: Line!
F: A few days ago you –

C: No you, you, not I!  I can’t sleep at night in a house where a revolver is hidden.  Tell me where you hid it.  We’ll smash it, destroy it together – Line!

F: I took the cartridges out when I put it away.

C: What good’s that do when you know where the cartridges are?

F: I removed them from the revolver, and put them away, where I’ve deliberately forgotten and won’t remember.

C: “Deliberately forgotten!”  Worthless!  In a dream you’ll remember.  Felice, there’s death in the house and you know where its waiting!

F: You have the face of an angel. – I could no more ever, no matter how much you begged me, fire a revolver at you than any possible, unimaginable thing.  Not even lead you outside a door that can’t be closed completely without its locking itself till the end of-  (she turns to face him.) -I haven’t completely closed it., it isn’t finally closed...  Clare, don’t you know that you haven’t an enemy in the world except yourself?

C: To be your own enemy is to have against you the worst, the most relentless enemy of all.

F: That I don’t need to be told.  Clare, the door’s still open.  

C: Yes, a little, enough to admit the talk of –

F: Are we going out, now, or giving up all but one possible thing?

C:  - We’re – going out now.  There never really was any question about it, you know.

F:  Good.  At last you admit it.

C: I’m just – just going upstairs to fetch your fair weather jacket and a tie to go with it. (turns upstage) Oh, but no stairs going off!

F: The set’s not complete.

C: I know, I knew, you told me.   I have gone upstairs and you are alone in
the parlor.

F: Yes, I am alone in the parlor with the front door open.  – I hear voices from the street, the class and laughter of demons.  “Loonies, loony, loonies, loooo-nies!”  - I shut the door, remembering what I’d said.

C: You said that it might never be opened again.  (turns around) Oh, there you are!

F: Yes, of course, waiting for you.

C: I wasn’t long, was I?

F: - No, but I wondered if you would actually come back down.  

C: Here I am, and here is your jacket and here is your tie.  (holds out empty hands)

F: The articles are invisible.

C: Put on your invisible jacket and your invisible tie.

F: I go through the motions of –

C: The door is shut – why did you shut the door?

F:  - The wind was blowing dust in.

C: There is no wind at all.

F: There was, so I –

C: Shut the door.  Will you be able to open it again?