Last week I was invited to the Dan Velez Scholarship Fund Event, a wonderful evening of food, drinks and fun to honor the life and legacy of late casting director Dan Velez. My essay on the power of comedy was selected from over 400 submissions as a top 6 finalist for the Fund, which provides money and mentorship to young actors. While I was not selected as a winner, I feel so affirmed by my selection (by Board Members including Sarah Michelle Gellar and Casting Director Mary Vernieu) and had a great time celebrating with other young creators who are "Dreaming Big"! I'm working on a new edit of my essay and will post it here on my blog when it is ready to share :)
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This week marks the first ever Global FTD Awareness Week, a campaign to spread information and raise awareness of Frontotemporal Degeneration coordinated by the Association for FTD. FTD is a type of dementia which affects younger people (anywhere from age 21-60) and affects speech, movement, and behavior as opposed to memory. I am sharing information on social media this week in honor of my loved one who is affected by this disease, as well as sharing info and accepting donations towards FTD research at this Friday's Robot Teammate show. Come to iO West at 8pm pm on Oct 9, 2015, and I will have goodie bags and more info for people who wish to donate! Thank you for your support :)
Had a lot of fun working with my talented friends in Dirty Cues Productions on this sketch, a parody of the "Big" trailer from the '80s where Tom Hanks, aka the hilarious and gorgeous Shana Eva, wishes on Zoltar and has an absurd wish come true - [spoiler] she grows a dick, becomes VP, and receives a huge pay raise! It's silly and funny but speaking of 80's - women earn approx 80% of what their male counterparts earn (PewResearch.org). According to the WGA, only 11% of studio films are written by women (this sketch was written by Susie Lohse), and women comprise only 30% of speaking characters and 12% of protagonists on screen. Silly and absurd, indeed! Had a blast co-creating, producing and performing Robot Teammate & The Accidental Party's first written musical, TIMEHEART, at the Hollywood Fringe! We had a sold-out run of 7 performances at The Lillian Theatre's 99-seat house and were nominated for Best Musical, Outstanding Songwriting, and Premiere Musicals!
Since then Chris and I took a trip to Cape Cod for the 4th, visited my family in Cleveland, have been rehearsing for upcoming Sumeau shows, and I have been in rehearsals for a weekend of short plays opening tomorrow (Thurs July 23) at Theatre Asylum called 'Straight From Ohio.' July is just as bustling as June was, but it feels really great to be working with people I love on new projects! Haven't been updating my blog regularly, but I assure you Weird Look Weds is alive and well on Instagram. Follow me at @katprimeau for your weekly dose of WLW inspiration!
Been superrr busy producing and performing in TIMEHEART, now playing at Hollywood Fringe! The photo above is some fan art made by the very talented Monica Magana, check out more of her work here! Also just released a Game of Thrones parody with my friends, Dirty Cues. Watch the vid here (and check out this sweet review on UPROXX!). It all started with a sleepover. It was 2013, and a group of Robots had gathered in Dave's old apartment in The Valley on a cool October-in-LA Friday night. The evening was to be spent reviewing performance tapes from our shows in the Cherry Crush at iO West, 13 minute snippets of chaos and magic and adrenaline Sierra had filmed for us, so we could hammer out more of our musical improv form. We also needed to prep for our very first photo shoot, which was to happen the following morning. We had two spankin' new robobabes in our ranks, and we were STOKED to finally be getting team photos. We picked a loose theme of vintage sci-fi and made plans to pick up dry ice in the morning so we could stage an alien abduction shot. Nikki had stocked the fridge with craft brews and Dave was making some weird macaroni dish that only single guys in their 20s eat, and we were feeling good. It was pretty much what you'd expect from a bunch of singing comedians at a mandatory bonding event. Loud. Boisterous. A serious amount of fun. At some point we all started trying on outfits to wear for the shoot, encouraging each other to come up with character names and back stories. Chris put on his hat and tweed jacket and was trying to pick out a tie to wear, but rather than selecting one tie, left all the options around his neck and became "Professor Allties." Bryan had a ridiculous purple jumpsuit that he paired with green alien eyes and a lunchbox for that authentic 'blue-collar alien' effect. I convinced Sam to wear some black studded leggings, and Molly started bouncing round the room in moon boots. Somehow, at some point, the idea of turning our looks into characters in a full-length written musical was floated and we "Yes, and'ed" that shit all the way to today - about a month before our time travel musical TIMEHEART premieres at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. A lot has happened since then. That very night, Sam fell asleep using my white faux fur jacket as a sleeping bag. We stopped performing at the Cherry Crush. At another sleepover, all the Robot ladies wore onesie animal pajamas. We road tripped to gigs in Lake Arrowhead and San Diego. Later still, we got t-shirts printed with our name and logo printed on them! I wear mine constantly (witness my #WLW above). The outfits have changed, our TIMEHEART costumes continue to evolve, but we've always been working on this wild idea we dreamt up, outlining then improvising then writing then re-writing and revising some more. In many ways, crafting a musical together has been just like that first sleepover - loud and boisterous and an incredible bonding experience... but we're not in Dave's living room anymore. We are about to go live, on Theatre Row in Hollywood, on a warm summer night in 2015, one and a half years later. It is so good to look back at some photos from that shoot (thanks again Brendan Dekora for shooting + EastWest Studios for hosting), to see where we came from, and to dream of what the next year and a half may bring! I hope you get the same joy looking at them (below) as I do...and if you wanna see the finished product, our sci-fi musical baby, I hope you come to see TIMEHEART at the Hollywood Fringe! ![]() Transforming into the TIMEHEART in a skort from Wasteland; vintage leotard I think from my mom's old clothing collection in the basement?; arm band from my brother in law; crescent moon earrings from Teresa Calabrese; gold and white sandals from Nikki Muller; clock purse from the second hand store in Boston! |
what can we do?
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