actresses

Inside the dressing room

- Sheylara 15 Comments

There is no feeling in the world better than performing in front of a responsive live audience (well, with the exception of savouring a very tasty bbq chicken wing).

Gads, I shouldn’t have said that. Now I’m hungry.

I shall attempt to distract myself by…

Actually, I am very distracted today. I have been attempting to get this blogpost going since 40 minutes ago and I’m still at the fourth line now because I keep going away to FB chat and MSN chat and watch stupid YouTube videos that the silly people I’m chatting with keep linking to me.

Dammit!

Well, it’s a Saturday and I’m in quite a relaxed mood. I’m allowing myself a few hours to relax and ignore deadlines before I go bonkers.

And now, a photo to break the wall of text I’m unintentionally creating.

Dressing room!

[We love big bright light bulbs that blind us and heat up the room]

For this week’s performance, the dressing room is shared by about 12 actresses. (The guys get another room.) There are toilets and bathrooms and even a washing machine in here, which is nice.

It can get pretty crowded when everyone’s inside but, averagely, we have four or five in here at any given time because the rest are backstage standing by.

It can also get smelly. All kinds of smells I don’t really want to describe, including a raw meat smell because one of the props for one of the plays is a real raw chicken.

And it gets really noisy.

At all times, a monitor is feeding us footage from the stage while actresses are either busy making very loud and strange noises to warm up the vocals or busy chatting, though I don’t know how they can hear each other through that din.

Of course, there is also one actress busy camwhoring.

[She decided to take photo evidence of the mess]

That’s my costume. I think I look like a lawyer. Haha.

I know I don’t look ugly in that suit, like I have been accused of falsely advertising. But I haven’t shown you the hair and makeup yet!

Like I mentioned before, I’m acting as a rat.

Some of you might protest that rats don’t wear suits. Others of you who have a perverse sense of humour might agree that some rats wear suits.

That I leave entirely up to you.

And, now, the ratifying transformation.

Ta-dah!

[The whiskers want for some trimming]

LOL.

Okay lah, it’s not that ugly. It’s more funny, I guess. It’s only ugly when I make those crazy expressions on stage.

Most people think I’m supposed to be a cat when they first see this. Well, short of attaching fake incisors, which would really impede my speech (and my character is one garrulous rat), I don’t know how I can make myself look more ratty than catty.

Doesn’t really matter. It all becomes clear in the play, anyway.

Smiley rat!

[He was lulled into a false sense of security]

Which won’t be seen in the performance because my character doesn’t smile and doesn’t act cute.

My character is a bitch.

And so fun to play.

Ah, acting can be so fun!

The downside to this makeup is that the black stuff used to draw my nose gets into my pores and, even after I clean it with four different kinds of cleansers, I still look like I have a bad case of blackheads. Haha. I think I have to go for a good, long facial after this is over.

And I have to wash my hair when I get home late each night because it’s all gelled stiff to make me look very severe.

Right profile:

[Being a statue is very tiring]

Left profile:

[The bright lights are very hypnotising]

Room profile:

[They were all terrified of her]

Intriguing, eh?

There are still three more performances to go. Ticketing details here if you’re interested.

The whole show actually runs for about 2.5 hours because some plays drag on longer than 10 minutes. Mine is the last play and I think it’s pretty much about 10 minutes!

Come watch and remember to bring your sense of humour! It’s always sweet for actors when their jokes get laughed at.

See you!

I watch TV okay, so there

- Sheylara 10 Comments

Tuesday nights are blogging nights because WoW servers are down for maintenance. But it’s kind of ironic that I’m blogging on this Tuesday night. I haven’t even been playing much WoW the past week or so.

Last week, I had an acting class graduation performance to prepare for and I was focused on that all week.

Oh, I haven’t mentioned I’m attending acting classes at Dream Forest Studios. Have just completed eight weeks of intermediate level acting and am waiting for the advanced class to start.

I should have taken more photos on “graduation night” but taking photos was the furthest thing from my mind, so I only managed to get one with my wonderfully dedicated acting coach.

Anyway, acting class is fun. It’s too bad there aren’t any indefinitely long-term acting classes in Singapore like there are in the USA.

A Hollywood acting coach whose workshop I attended a few months back told us that an actor should always be in acting class, if only to “keep in shape”. Kind of like how athletes constantly exercise their muscles. 

Singers and dancers constantly practise with their coaches, too, so why not actors?

Another thing that’s been keeping me away from WoW is Desperate Housewives.

I know, I’m a bit late, but I just acquired Season 1 and have gone through 17 episodes in four days. If it were up to me, I would have finished watching all 23 episodes in two days (it’s that nice) but the Goonfather has been in competition with me for the air waves in the room.

He likes to turn on the room TV when I’m watching DH on my computer.

The annoying thing is that he doesn’t even concentrate on the TV show. He likes to turn it on and imagine that he’s watching it while he’s playing PSP. I think he feels good to imagine that he’s multi-tasking.

I don’t know how anyone can hear ANYTHING with Desperate Housewives blaring through computer speakers, HBO booming out of bigass room speakers and suicidal lemmings squealing from PSP speakers, all at the same time.

I am so envious of lemmings.

I started watching Desperate Housewives because my acting coach said the actresses in the show make very good acting choices in interpreting the scripts. So I decided to watch and learn. Not that I’m not already trying to learn something every time I watch a movie. (Sometimes I lose track of movie plots because I’m concentrating too much on the acting and cinematography.) 

Anyway, it’s great to be able to say that I’m “watching TV” because people have been complaining about me being an actress who doesn’t watch TV.

But people don’t know that the reason I stopped watching TV is because I get so addicted. Like I am now addicted to Desperate Housewives. What a brilliant show! I even sacrificed WoW time to watch it. Wow.

Alright. I have succeeded in totally not blogging about what I had started out to. In fact, I had planned to blog about WoW since three blogs ago but each time I start writing, something else just presses it’s way in.

How rude.

By the way, wearing Birkenstocks on a daily basis has given me an awful callus on my right heel, even when I use a heel cream twice a day. That’s sad because I really love my Birki’s and have been thinking of acquiring another pair.

I can’t be a foot model now!

Humans are annoyingly fragile and vulnerable. Damn.