I’m happy to announce that I will be doing a reading of Stephanie Alison Walker’s newest play Sophia Hayden Deserves Better. Stephanie is an incredible writer whose work on the stage has left me weeping in the audience long past curtain. When I experience her work, I experience an ocean of truth; so deep and refreshing, with sudden pockets of joy and comedy. It is some of the most raw and interesting work I have ever seen.

So you can imagine how excited I am to get to do a reading of her brand new play.

I first met Stephanie when I was enrolled in Emily Chase’s very first class about working on new plays. Stephanie was a playwright invited to watch a couple of scenes from her play being workshopped in the class and, though I wasn’t doing one of her scenes, I saw a spark in her that I absolutely adored and I knew I wanted to connect with her as a friend. For years, we have been building that friendship brick-by-brick (or tweet-by-tweet?), and it is such a joy that I get to read her words and perform them for the (Zoom) world!

Not only am I excited because I know the play is fantastic. I am excited because I get to work with some awesome people as well. I’m excited to work with Randee Trabitz who directed Stephanie’s play Friends With Guns at The Road Theatre, as well as actors Rob Nagle and Marcelo Tubert, two friends of mine from the Antaeus Company. Rob and I go so far back he auditioned me for my very first theatre class!

Join us for this very special reading on Saturday, June 12th at 12pm Pacific Time (that’s 3pm Eastern Time, and 8pm in the U.K.). Click here to reserve your spot! This is part of the Playwrights Union’s First Peek series, so be sure to check out the other plays as well. I had the privilege to read a couple of first drafts of some of those plays and was wildly impressed to see how they were coming together so early in their purest form. Congrats to all the talented and hard-working playwrights taking part!

During the pandemic, with so much of the film industry on hold, I worked so hard to take care of myself and to find purpose and drive in a truly difficult time. Prior to lockdown, I had been asked to become an ambassador for The Chimaera Project, and after familiarizing myself with everything they had to offer women filmmakers, I not only accepted… I offered to help them develop a mentorship program.

I’m so proud to announce the launch of SUPPORT.HER, a mentorship program for women and non-binary filmmakers. We’ve launched with six awesome inaugural mentors, four old friends and two new ones. It was so exciting to reach out to them because I could really feel their “Hell yeah” vibes and I just knew we were doing something important and necessary.

One thing I kept thinking about every single day was about my desire for every woman and non-binary filmmaker to know just how much we were thinking about them and working to give them opportunities to change the landscape for them going forward. I wrote this down for myself because I wanted it to drive me every day.

And this is just the beginning. We are going to learn so much from this first cycle and we are so excited to expand and develop in-person mentorships, scholarships, and even job shadowing opportunities in future cycles.

I’m so grateful to The Chimaera Project team who both empowered and supported me to take the lead on this. And I also want to thank all my friends who’ve shared the mentorship program either on their social media accounts or privately between friends. It means the world to me to see this shared far and wide!

Find out more at chimaeraproject.org/supporther. Applications are open until July 31st, 2021.

Seven years ago, under the tutelage of one incredible Shakespeare teacher by the name of Armin Shimerman, I worked on the role of Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was then I realized it was a role that I was meant to play.

The first time I remember hearing Hermia described as “And though she be but little, she is fierce” I knew that it was written for me. Measuring in just below five foot two, with a voice that could probably shatter glass if I gave it a shot, I fell hard for this role. I loved it. I even adopted the quote as my own personal slogan and got an iPhone case with the quote on it in a fancypants cursive writing. It was me. I am Hermia.

So when my friend, actor and director Natalie Reiko, approached me to play Hermia in her reading this past weekend, I was ecstatic! I worked with Natalie in Women of Shakespeare a couple of years ago when I played Viola to her Sebastian in scenes from Twelfth Night. I have considered her like a sister ever since. And the cherry on top? I got to play the role opposite our friend Michelle Grey in the role of Helena. [Insert fire emoji here.] Dream casting!

Natalie’s vision for the play was a total remix. Deconstructing the original text, she reassembled the play into five chapters where she told the story from the perspective of the different groups within the tale starting with the mechanicals, shifting to the royals, the fairies, and back to the mechanicals to end with the whole ensemble enjoying the play within the play. This retelling introduced a temporal feeling to the story, where the story only becomes truly clear as you see it played out multiple times, getting faster and tighter each time. It was a beautifully crafted new concept and I look forward to seeing how Natalie develops it further.

I’m so glad I had this opportunity to explore the role with the Infinite Jest Theatre Company and I hope to get another chance to play Hermia in the near future. Now that I am fully vaccinated and we’re working towards returning to the stage, I look forward to seeing what’s next. Aside from Hermia, the role of Titania calls to me; I have been obsessed with her since I first read the play in Mrs. Isler’s English class in grade 8. I believe I will play Titania someday, and I look forward to that day. Until then, my heart is full, and I’m so grateful that I had this chance—in the middle of a freaking pandemic—to play Hermia.

While the world is slowly awakening from its own mystifying dream, I am happy I had this time to dream together (but distanced) with friends. I’m also excited we got to do it on Zoom because it meant that my mother could watch from Canada. She has only seen me do live theatre once when I was playing Jackie Kennedy in The Tragedy of JFK, so while many may be tired of working remotely, I’m excited I could connect with her in a new way.

Aside from acting and filmmaking, one of my greatest passions is being a source of support. I have always wanted to help fellow filmmakers get over their hurdles, everything from helping them develop an indie marketing strategy to sharing the actual nuts and bolts of producing a film or series start to finish. I have lent my brain power to projects led by Ted Raimi and David Sutcliffe, but there is nothing more rewarding to me than helping out my fellow females.

Having showrun a digital series for SONY, directed over a hundred webisodes, and produced even more, I know a lot about the unique challenges we face as women in this industry. Growing up in a competitive environment made it difficult to understand how much stronger women can be when we don’t waste our time cutting each other down. The truth is that filmmaking is a collaborative experience; it’s a team sport. It works best when we all work together. Theatre taught me this. There is no space for competition on stage; we must row the paddles together or the entire barge will sink deep into the ocean. Heck, sometimes an actor will blank on their lines while onstage… and it’s often up to the rest of the cast to help get the production back on track. We save each other! The same should apply to every single level of filmmaking.

When I first heard about the Chimaera Project, I was ecstatic! A non-profit dedicated to uplifting filmmakers identifying as female at every step of their career? Yes, please! It has been an incredible resource to share with women in my industry as they provide hands-on training, informative panels, spotlights on female filmmakers doing great work, and an amazing program to provide finishing funds to multiple projects a year. Practically every time I’ve met a woman even thinking about writing a script or making something themselves, I have enthusiastically told them to do it and that Chimaera Project has their back.

It is that enthusiasm that led the ladies behind the organization to ask me to be an ambassador for them.

As an ambassador, my responsibility is to show up and support; attend screenings, check out panels, take photos of female filmmakers doing their thing, and just celebrate all the hard work it took to get to where they are today. How joyful is that?! I’m excited to continue empowering my fellow female filmmakers, even if only in virtual spaces at first. So, if you’ve got a project coming out that you want to share, please let me know! Let’s move forward together.

And because I care so much about this organization (and about you, dear reader), I am teaming up to develop something very exciting with them for the future. No hints yet, but stay tuned…

And if you’re an ally who wishes to champion female filmmakers by helping us build this incredible organization, please donate what you can to the Chimaera Project on Venmo (@TheChimaera-Project) or on PayPal. Another way to help is to link to the Chimaera Project whenever you think we might be helpful to someone. You can always tag us on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) and definitely let us know when you see a screening or panel that might be of interest to us!

Thank you for reading and for supporting. 🙏

Greetings from Los Angeles! As a little thank you to all the people who’ve supported me over the years and to spread a little joy while we’re all stuck at home, I’m giving away postcards to some lucky fans! I’ve already ran out of the Chromo46 postcards pictured above, but I do have some cards with an old headshot that I can send.

Want a postcard? Go to my contact page and send me your name and mailing address!

Providing the USPS doesn’t die a painful death in the next few months, I can mail your postcard to anywhere in the world.

Watch the video before reading further.

The film follows a journalist named Jamie Clark, played by myself, who is interviewing a physicist on his discovery of a portal to another universe. The character called to me as soon as I read the script; from her quips to her cunningness, I was so glad that Antony came to me with this role that I knew was ready to be unleashed from within me.

For years, I’ve been obsessed with science fiction stories that feature morally ambiguous characters. Shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica where you can never be sure if someone is “good” or “bad.” In a way, that’s life. Humans can not be confined to definitions like good or bad because we are complex individuals with different needs. We are imperfect, we are flawed and that is what makes us human, so seeing these characters in my favorite stories has always called to me. In fact, my friend Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who worked on DS9, once described me as “a heel to face revolving door,” a term he uses for actors who are able to switch between villainy and heroism and back again continually, hence the revolving door. This was a quality I saw in Jamie Clark, and I knew it was a role I needed to pursue.

I first met Antony many years ago when I interviewed him for one of my early web series, A Comicbook Orange. At the time we discussed his comic book series Wasteland and his work writing the Dead Space video games. We’ve stayed in touch all these years and I was so excited when he brought this project to me. As a member of SAG-AFTRA, I was happy (and relieved) when Antony agreed to make this a union production and with my background in producing he decided to promote me to producer so I could facilitate the process myself. It took a little extra time, research, and paperwork, but it was a necessary step for me to partake and I’m glad we did it. After going through the signatory process, I am competent to bring more productions into the union fold for the future.

Production was an interesting process. Everyone worked from home using their own equipment, clothing, props, and makeup. Antony directed from northern England, actor Moisés Chiullan worked from his home near Austin, Texas, and I worked from home in Los Angeles. Calculating accurate time differences and ensuring everyone was on the same page for scheduling was vitally important. My shoot day started around 2pm Pacific Daylight Time, which was 10pm British Summer Time for Antony. This method of filmmaking – remote, transatlantic principal photography – is unprecedented in our history; we are so lucky to be living in a world with such access to technology.

Filming went well. I was a little worried because my LA neighborhood can sometimes become noisy due to gardeners using leaf-blowers, construction workers using saws, unexpected car noises, air traffic, and (more recently) children playing in the street. We were fortunate, however, that on the day we set to film, we didn’t have to worry about any of it. We did have to worry about my cat moseying in to get my attention and a little bit of window rattling due to the wind, but nothing we couldn’t handle. After about five takes (the last one for safety), we called it a day and I sent over video and audio files that were filmed through the video conferencing app and QuickTime on my computer. Yes, that’s right, we shot it all in non-stop takes!

Post-production was a breeze for me as I moved onto other projects, contributing a self-taped monologue to Marc Bernardin’s The Plague Nerdalogues and taking a much-needed restorative class with Risa Bramon Garcia of the BGB Studio. At this point, all the hard work was placed on Antony’s shoulders and he did an incredible job. I was especially delighted by his creativity with the end credits, a process he discusses in more detail in his Medium post.

As we are still in mortal danger of this pandemic, we decided to premiere live on YouTube. It was amazing to get that immediate response from friends and viewers in the live chat. We are happy to see the project covered by Bleeding Cool and Sci-Fi Bulletin, and we got to talk to my old friends Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young about the project on Night Attack. We have a few other interviews lined up and are open to more, so feel free to reach us through my contact page.

In the end, I just want to say how inspirational this whole process has been. Antony has been a wonderful collaborator and I appreciate the little team we’ve built and sustained over the past few months. We listened to each other and formulated plans together, and I can’t thank him enough for this whole experience. At the beginning of the year, I promised myself to go back to my indie filmmaking roots and produce more; Antony made that happen for me.

I am now ready for more. Obviously I would be thrilled if someone wanted to develop Crossover Point further, but for now I am focusing on what more I can create from home as we continue to be safe and socially distance until a vaccine is available. I am taking stock of all the equipment at my fingertips and coming up with a plan. As Liam Neeson once said, I have a “very particular set of skills.”

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For more info on Crossover Point, check out our IMDb page.

My friend Marc Bernardin started a brilliant project last month where he assembled an amazing group of actor friends and colleagues to shoot famous genre monologues to raise money for charity. His project, The Plague Nerdalogues, had a successful first launch with big names like Phil LaMarr, Tricia Helfer, and Jonathan Frakes raising over 16K for No Kid Hungry, and today he launched a second wave to raise money for Black Lives Matter. I am happy to announce that my monologue has just been posted along with many awesome others. To watch, go to theplaguenerdalogues.com and donate as little as $10.

I’m so glad to be a part of Marc’s project. We all feel so powerless right now, and it is empowering for us to use what powers we have to do good in the world.

So which monologue did I choose? Since I had already recorded my beloved Conquest of the Planet of the Apes monologue a couple of months ago (on Instagram), I decided to learn a new one. I have always admired the monologue Captain Benjamin Sisko gives in the crescendo of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s season six episode “In the Pale Moonlight,” so it was an easy choice. I did what I could to make it my own while maintaining the humanity that the writers brought to the character before Avery Brooks so skillfully executed it. I hope you enjoy my new rendition as much as I enjoyed working on it.

And make sure you check out all the other great monologues when you’re there. I especially adored Jessie Graff’s Batman & Robin, Brea Grant’s quirky 12 Monkeys speech, Yuri Lowenthal’s roaringly hilarious Bane, David Ramsey’s chillingly delightful take on Misery, and Rekha Sharma’s beautifully connected Valerie from V For Vendetta.

Thank you in advance for supporting this important cause with us!

Update (6/17/2020): Lin-Manuel Miranda has joined the fun by contributing a monologue of Admiral Adama from Battlestar Galactica. If you have already contributed, you can go back to the site and watch it. If not, what are you waiting for?! ;)

Update (7/7/2020): After successfully raising over $50,000 for Black Lives Matter, Marc has made the whole site free for all! You can now watch all the nerdy monologues you wish… and if you feel inclined to still donate and help a good cause, we’d love you to drop something in the tip jar on the site. Click here to see the monologues!

Over the past few years, I have spent some of my extra time participating in the SAG-AFTRA Conservatory program at the American Film Institute (AFI). As an actor, it is important to always keep learning, flexing your acting muscles, and meet people, so the conservatory has been a great space to do just that.

The cherry on top of the AFI sundae is that we also get to audition and work on all the great student films being made there. Not only is it a great way to meet the filmmakers of the future, but it also helps when you’ve decided to change your hair color (guilty!) and you need new reel footage (also guilty!).

I am so blessed by all the young filmmakers I’ve met at AFI, especially Olivia Hang Zhou and Amanda Baião. Both of these gifted women will be graduating this year and I am so grateful they came into my life. What could have been just a few days together is turning into a lifelong friendship. We have each other’s backs and I value and support their work, their compassion, and their creative visions. I’m so excited to see where they take their careers in the future. For now, they are most likely trying to navigate quarantine life like the rest of us, but I’m sure that soon they will be knocking down doors in Hollywood and bursting into rooms internationally.

While we wait for the world to open up again, Olivia is raising money for her thesis film Spring Tiding. Please consider donating; the story sounds absolutely captivating and real, and I know that Olivia deserves the support so she can execute her vision and touch even more hearts.

Thanks to all the wonderful volunteers at the SAG-AFTRA Los Angeles Conservatory who work tirelessly to make this all happen, especially Victoria Hoffman who has often called me last minute to fill in. I’m always happy to be the dependable one!

The acting world is changing and adapting around us. People are shut in at home, but that doesn’t mean an end to acting altogether, and VO is one of the ways we are still working.

Earlier this year, I cut together a couple of voice reels; the first is for animation, and the second is for narration.

As a gamer and an actor interested in working in video games, I didn’t feel that my animation reel would really cover the kind of voice work required for video games. Animation work is more often about creating fun characters based on age, personality, moral stance, and quirks, so I created a narration reel to show a more contrasted, human approach to character work. On that reel, I included a reading of Jane Eyre in Received Pronunciation as well as a Shakespeare sample read in the character of Jackie Kennedy.

I had a wonderful time creating these reels and look forward to doing more VO in the coming years. Enjoy!

One of the perks of originating a role in a world premiere play—which, let me be clear, is a perk all of its own—is that eventually the script gets published and printed. I am happy to announce that the script for Mayakovsky and Stalin was recently published and that this is the first time my name has been printed in the cast list of a world premiere play! It’s been a long road, and I’m so proud to be included. Excuse me while I take a victory lap around my living room while carrying my cat in the place of a trophy.

Special thanks to our amazing stage manager Danny Crisp who snapped these photos and is also sharing this victory as it is his first published script credit as well. Happy to share this first with you, my friend. And congrats to the whole team!

We are living in unprecedented times. So many of us have never had to endure something of this magnitude in our lifetimes. I feel a whole new connection to my grandmother who lived through the Great Depression and I’m starting to understand why she lived such a frugal life.

Oddly, I felt somewhat prepared for this. As a lover of sci-fi, I have watched my fair share of post-9/11 apocalypse entertainment. I read The Walking Dead comics, later enjoying the series on television, and there was a time when I even pitched my own apocalypse readiness series co-starring a friend and much-beloved actress from a popular network TV series. So in that first week of social distancing and self-quarantine, I was empowered… I was Sarah Connor, with all the badassery of the second movie and the cheery apologetic smile from the beginning of the first.

By week two, however, I came down hard. The pressure was mounting and I knew this new lifestyle was here for the long haul. My household has made the decision to be extra careful. We have been rationing our resources so we haven’t done the groceries in over three weeks, we have reduced how often we do the laundry since we have to share a laundry room with dozens of other tenants, and we try not to order any deliveries because we have chosen to decontaminate everything coming into our home to assist with our peace of mind.

With mounting pressures in the domestic sphere, and the added fear that there is no acting work and so many of my friends and colleagues are applying for unemployment, I have had to find ways to cope and continue being an actor to maintain a positive mental attitude throughout quarantine.

I am sharing my process in the hope that it gives one of you, if not many of you, an idea on how to thrive in these uncertain times.

1. Self-care is key. As Her Majesty RuPaul Charles says, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?“ I believe the same goes for mental health. We are living like rats in a maze, and our performance in this time will be based on how well we care for ourselves first. I have found my balance by doing either exercise or guided meditation every weekday. On days when I exercise, I can skip the meditation, but I have found that starting my day with something this focused and maintaining a schedule is brutally important for staying mentally balanced and strong.

2. Take every opportunity to act. Many casting directors have been holding open calls where actors from all over the world are sending in self-taped monologues and scenes filmed from home. Rise up to the challenge. Go that extra mile. For many actors that have yet to be called into their favorite casting office, this is your chance to shine! My old friend Seth Caskey, a casting director who often works with Elizabeth Barnes, announced on Friday that their casting office received almost 17,000 submissions and they are planning to watch every single video over the course of the next few weeks. A valiant endeavor.

3. Be the doer. There are two kinds of actors: those that wait for work and those that create the work. Be the latter. The more you create your own opportunities, the more you will work. What do all those A-list Hollywood actors have in common? They produce their own films. You don’t necessarily have to aim that high, but do something that will bring you satisfaction and camaraderie with all those wonderfully talented actors in your community. I had the pleasure of hosting a Shakespeare reading over Zoom recently with some of the most brilliant Shakespearean actors in my network from Los Angeles to Dublin. We used this opportunity to read one of Bill’s lesser known works; Timon of Athens, a play about a man who chooses to self-isolate.

4. Check-in with your network. From week one I started reconnecting with my friends and colleagues by setting up coffee dates and dinner dates over Skype/FaceTime. I genuinely did this to check-in on friends and make sure they were maintaining a sense of calm in this new mass work-from-home atmosphere. Unexpectedly, it ended up being a career-building experience; many of my friends reiterated their desire to work with me as soon as we get the greenlight to move forward again. This was empowering to hear, and I am filled with gratitude and hope for the future as I type this. Hope is important, just ask Obama.

5. Now is the time to level-up. We have a lot more time on our hands, so use this time to improve your craft. Attend remote meetings with casting directors, take virtual classes, watch great films and series, dig deep into your favorite actors’ repertoires, read plays, read books about the craft, work on a new monologue, etc. As casting director and acting coach Risa Bramon Garcia said in her recent BGB Virtual Sit-Down, “Look at this as a creative boot camp… so when this is over and the dust settles, we are ready to level up.”

6. It’s okay to take a timeout. Some days are better than others, and all humans are different. So be kind to yourself and remember that it’s okay to take a timeout. A therapist once told me that when you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s okay to cry, but give yourself a time limit. Last week I was overwhelmed when everything seemed to go wrong for my self-tapes; my furniture was constantly in the way, my old tripod made everything sticky AF, and the lighting was atrocious. I gave myself some time to feel… I laid down in bed, shed those tears of frustration, hugged my cat, then I pulled myself back up and followed Yoda’s mantra, “Do or do not, there is no try.” And do I did. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped me determine what equipment I need to update in order to improve my self-tapes and I am proud that I got the work done despite those shortcomings.

7. Do it anyway. Elaine Welteroth, the former editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue who rose to prominence for bringing underrepresented voices to the mainstream publication, wrote in her memoir More Than Enough about her struggles to demand equal pay. When discussing every one of her fears with a privileged white male friend, he kept repeating the same advice over and over: “do it anyway.” We will always find a million reasons not to do something if we can avoid it. (Heck, there are things I’m avoiding by writing this blog post today.) But history is determined by action and change, so do it anyway.

8. Be creative alone. In that January lull after the holidays but before Hollywood really picked up again, I got a lot done by myself. One thing I was really proud of was that I finally sat down and completed my animation voiceover reel, followed by a narration voiceover reel. Though I have worked in VO before, I had never sat down to cut together a voice reel because I didn’t feel like I had enough content, but thanks to a wonderful class with VO veteran Charlie Adler and rereading Voice-Over Voice Actor by VO superstars Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt, I dedicated myself to creating characters of various ages and types, recording in my make-shift sound booth/blanket tent with a Blue Snowball USB mic hooked up to GarageBand, and getting it done! I also cut together an updated film reel in iMovie. Using these basic programs can be frustrating, but I familiarized myself with them and it will be easier next time.

9. Be creative with friends. Now is the time to reach out and see what you can do with friends. Reach out on your social network of choice, and assemble a team of creatives to make something. It takes a village to make a film (you’ve seen those never-ending end credits!), so start out as small as you need to and see what you and your friends can come up with. Why limit Zoom readings to just actors? Imagine what you can do with a stage manager at the helm of those controls and a director to come up with creative ideas to redirect and fine tune actors’ performances. And what about puppets?! Someone please make a Zoom with puppets! Just look at what SNL was able to accomplish this weekend as they creatively leaned into working through this challenging new era of social distancing. Study new technologies, exchange ideas with people throughout the industry, and come up with clever solutions together. Never regret learning something new.

10. Have fun. Trust your instincts and lead yourself towards the endeavors that bring you joy. Many of my friends have been using Zoom and Roll20 to play role-playing games where they get to improvise their own characters! They come up with backstories, put on voices, and get to improv fun scenarios while slaying dragons. This is an incredible way to use your acting talents, while also developing the writing talents you didn’t know you have but were *in you the whole time.* The important thing to do is to find what makes you happy while continuing to be an actor. Another fun activity I’ve seen many friends do is to stream themselves reading stories. LeVar Burton and Kirsten Vangness are two examples of actors who have been having fun using their beautiful reading skills to entertain us as we hunker down. Then there’s Sir Patrick Stewart who is reading a Sonnet a day. There is so much you can do… take inspiration where you can.

Look, this isn’t going to be easy. Until we all get that vaccine, we will be living altered lives. Who knows what the industry will look like when we return? Filmmaker Shannan Leigh Reeve has some intuitive insight about that possible future as she recounted a job she worked on while social distancing.

But one thing is for sure, the world is forever changed and we need to get onboard.

That said, it’s okay if you’re not ready yet. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. The industry is shifting and changing every day and it’s not a race. Take the time you need, but also take every available opportunity to be an actor that you can.

You are not alone, we are legion.

I’m happy to reveal my new headshots taken by photographer Rory Lewis in Los Angeles. The moment I became a redhead, my previous headshots became completely obsolete, and I’m hoping these new looks reflect the complex characters I enjoy portraying on camera and on the stage.

After a long and successful festival run, I am happy to announce that Chromo46 is finally available on both Amazon Prime Video and Vimeo. It’s been a joy to work with the Beleeve Entertainment team and to help promote the film on my social networks as it screened across the country, and I hope we get to work together again and again in the future. Such talents! Be sure to follow Shannan Leigh Reeve and Chelese Belmont online to see what they are working on next; they are here to stay!

After a successful screening of our sci-fi short Chromo46 at the Kapow Intergalactic Film Festival in North Hollywood last week, where we were proud to pick up a nomination for Best Ensemble, I’m happy to announce that it will be heading to New York to be screened at the Chelsea Film Festival on October 18th. If you plan to be in NY and want to get tickets, head over to the festival’s website here. All details on the screening are below:

It’s been such a fun day here in Hollywoodland where Emmys season is heating up with the weather and the marvelous Amazon Studios planned a special event called Maisel Day to celebrate their hit show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I am very fond of the show, as I am of any show that shines a light on women in decades past. Our stories are so often relegated to being a wife, sister, or daughter, so it’s a breath of fresh air to see a period piece that shows the many sides of a woman.

So I just wanted to write a little special thank you to Amazon Studios for giving all of us Los Angeles residents a chance to partake in your special day. My 1959 hairdo cost me a whopping $2! A price so cheap, I felt guilty taking an Uber to my appointment, so I did right by the environment (and my pocketbook) and took public transit for $2.50. Totally worth doing.

And thanks to Amy Sherman-Palladino for creating this incredible series, as well as a couple of others I have enjoyed throughout my life on this pale blue dot. Keep making powerful feminist television, Amy, I appreciate every second!

Oh, you want to see more photos? Here you go:

After many years living and working as a fully natural brunette, I’ve taken the plunge into my exciting new life as a redhead! I absolutely loved my natural hair, especially how silky and shiny it was after having lived with straw-blonde hair for a few years, but it was time for a change.

I considered going grey or purple, but those colors wouldn’t have allowed me to continue doing the period pieces I adore on stage or on film without a wig, so I decided to try my hat at being a ginger. I spent a lot of time obsessing over the right color and I’m very happy with the copper color my colorist and long-time hairstylist Vanessa Dena achieved. She worked so hard to get the shade and look just right.

I’ll be getting new headshots soon with a British photographer that I am SO excited about, but until then I will be attaching this handy photo to my old brunette headshots as a sort of update.

I’m really looking forward to the future, both on a professional level as well as on a personal level. I’m especially looking forward to Halloween this year… one hint: it’s the costume I have been telling all my redheaded friends they should do for the past decade, but they never listen to me!

Now to go and listen to Seeing Red by Minor Threat… have an awesome day!

I had the pleasure of participating in this live-streamed reading of Macbeth to help raise money for A Tale Told By an Idiot. The upcoming feature film is a new adaptation of Macbeth told through the lens of a modern Silicon Beach startup, and it’s produced by and starring my friends Brendan Bradley and Ashley Clements. I’m so proud of them, so when they reached out to me for help reading parts on the live-stream, how could I say no?

As with any opportunity to act, I met a lot of new friends… from seasoned Shakespearean actors to talented young entertainers making their mark online. It was a pleasure to get to play with my friends David Nett and Mary Kate Wiles, and to be introduced to the enormous talents of Ryan Garcia and Gabe Greenspan.

I played a number of roles from Donalbain to Angus, but it was the tiniest side characters that were the most fun. Since the new film is set in Santa Monica, I pulled out a bunch of SoCal-specific accents and personalities from my hat. I particularly enjoyed playing Lady Macbeth’s servant as a total valley girl, really emphasizing the final foot in every line of iambic pentameter using uptalk(?). I was also happy to discover a new way to interpret the idea of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane: I played the Messenger in Act 5 Scene 5 as a stoner, using empty beats after Macbeth’s famous “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech to inhale a spliff and really playing up this character’s paranoid uncertainty of what he just saw.

In the end, a great time was had and they raised more money for their production thanks to the viewers and fans. Thanks for having me, dudes!

If you missed it, catch it online here before it disappears forever…

When someone in a Shakespeare audition asks you what your dream role is, how do you answer? How can I even begin to reply to a question like that when the answer in my heart is ALL OF THEM?

I have been fortunate so far to play Rosalind, Calpurnia, a gender-bent Guildenstern, and to have studied over a dozen more, but I’m so excited to be taking on three amazing dream roles in the upcoming production Women of Shakespeare. In the play, focusing on the themes of Loss and Reconciliation, I will be playing Viola from Twelfth Night, Constance from King John, and Regan from King Lear.

And what’s better is that I get to share my passion with an ensemble of ladies for a theatre company I believe in.

A few months ago, I became a U.S. citizen, and every day since taking the oath I have heard JFK’s voice in my head asking me what I can do for my country. Never did I imagine that I would discover a theatre company that provides our veterans with a space to heal through catharsis. Warriors For Peace does just that, putting on productions that combines actors from both military and civilian backgrounds. I believe that no matter what your political beliefs, we cannot forget the sacrifices our troops have made. We are losing 20 veterans a day to suicide and that is unacceptable. I’m so happy to be involved with a company that is doing something to change that.

Join us for this amazing one-night event on Monday, March 25th at 7pm at the historic Hollywood American Legion Post 43. Tickets are available on Eventbrite.

I’m so happy I can finally share this trailer for Chromo46 written by Chelese Belmont, who also appears in the lead role, and directed by Shannan Leigh Reeve. This collaboration has been a long time coming.

I first met Shannan in a Shakespeare class over five years ago at Antaeus Theatre. I can still see and hear her voice performing Viola’s “I left no ring with her” speech from Twelfth Night. We stayed in touch over the years and I even auditioned for one of their other short films. The experience solidified our friendship and our desire to work together and when they brought me the script for Chromo46, I was in!

So here I am playing the Spokeswoman, a sharp and sophisticated character who you can most definitely trust with your DNA. Definitely.

The short film premiered at the Los Angeles Movie Awards last month and is expected to be in a number of other festivals around the U.S. this year.

Thank you to Shannan and Chelese for this opportunity and I hope this is the start of many collaborations over the course of our careers.

We closed the world premiere of Mayakovsky and Stalin a couple of weeks ago and I feel very lucky to have worked with this lovely cast and creative team.

The primary reason I was drawn to the project was because I met Alexis Sterling many years ago in the web series community, but still hadn’t worked with her. The idea of getting to see her lovely face during rehearsal every day and playing the unstable wife to her own talented husband, Maury Sterling, was the kind of opportunity that doesn’t come around very often. I was thrilled when they announced the rest of the cast, and I was so happy to make new friends during our run.

The other reason I was drawn to the production was the role: Nadya Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin’s wife who struggled with mental illness and committed suicide at the age of 31. The role was meaty as hell and too good to turn down. I spent the first week of rehearsals with a chronic headache and some of the worse stress I’ve had to deal with. It was so hard at times that I printed out a list of ways to combat depression and affixed it to my script. I was constantly diving deep and struggling to keep my head above water. It is truly humbling as an actor to delve into the abyss of what so many people face on a daily basis.

Due to the nature of the play and the Brechtian directing that had us looking out into the audience instead of at each other, my character was particularly sheltered and frustrated. It created an interesting dynamic and made it especially powerful when I got to break the format and look directly at my scene partner. It was a difficult process, but it filled me with the desire to work with these wonderful actors again so that we can actually look at each other someday! There is something very special about experiencing the fire of looking into another actor’s eyes on stage; it’s so intense to be that present, and you don’t know what you’re missing until you have to spend a whole play looking away from them!

Aside from the good reviews included above, we did some press too. In case you missed it, I appeared as a special guest on the Good Nerd Bad Nerd podcast to talk about the play, my love for Dune, and how sci-fi led me to a career in theatre. Maury Sterling did a great little interview with KTLA, and he and Rhonda Aldrich interviewed each other for StarTrek.com since they are both Star Trek alumni.

I’d like to thank all the amazing friends who came out to support me: Rudy Jahchan, Raya Yarbrough, Bear McCreary, Paul Whitfield, Armin Shimerman & Kitty Swink, Geoffrey Wade & Amelia White, Time & Tracy Winters, Rob Nagle, Bo Foxworth, Heather Stewart, Suzanne Keilly, Shelagh McFadden, Karianne Flaathen, Halley Kim, Guy Picot, Elena Murray, Bree Wernicke, Kelie McIver, Jacob Sidney, Graham Barnard, Meredith & Ethan Berg, William Meyer, Bonnie, Eunice Wilson, Armina LaManna, Mario Perez, and my manager Sharon King.

And thanks to new friends who came as well, especially Elizabeth Swain and Tony Amendola. There is nothing like seeing someone’s face light up with the recognition of knowing you from your work, and your faces are both ones I look up to a lot.

Since closing, I have been enjoying life on solid ground again and I finally finished a new draft of a short film I’ve been writing about depression. I look forward to sharing it with you someday in the near future.