My glamorous cast!

As many of you know, not only am I an author extraordinaire, I am also an actress/director of fabulous wonderfulness. If you don't know this, I suggest you re-read the name of my blog.

As you also may know from previous posts, I am directing a play I wrote a few years back for a theatre festival here in Toronto. The play is called A Weekend in the Country. The festival, SummerWorks (sounds very film noir those last two phrases).

Anyway, I thought you might be interested in a wee little update as to the goings on in that area of my life. And if you aren't, well, tough.

First of all I am happy to announce that I have a cast! This is very exciting because without a cast there would be no play. It is important to have actors when doing a play. Write that down for future reference.

My cast is awesome! We started rehearsals last week and they really are rather good. Intuitive and fun, and very hard working.

The day before I left for Newfoundland we did a photoshoot (as I may have mentioned briefly, can't remember) for photos for the press pack. A press pack is something you send out to reviewers and stuff in the hopes of enticing them to come to the show and spread the good word. I wanted all 7 of my actors in the shot, as it is very much an ensemble piece (unfortunately one of my actors was on the west coast, so I had to sit in for her - we have the same colouring and stuff, still it was too bad she couldn't be in the picture, though of course we will take others over the course of rehearsals). And I thought the best way to do it, since we didn't have any posh living room or anything, was to be very Vanity Fair about the whole thing and make it look like an obvious studio shot. I had a nice chat with the photographer about my vision (the brother of one of my actors, Ezra Teitel), and had a nice back and forth, and he totally came through for us.

So here is my very sexy, fabulous cast in what I call their post-hunt-in-the-English-countryside attire (and while she is not in the picture, I can assure you the missing actress, Lisa Warner, is incredibly sexy as well):

(left to right: Michael Leventis as the POET, Hannah Cheesman as the ACTRESS, Julian DeZotti as the BUSINESSMAN, Tim Chisholm as RICHARD, Darrah Teitel as the DIRECTOR, Philip Borg as the PROFESSOR, and me, though technically, Lisa Warner as the HOUSE WIFE)

It took a good 4 hours to get ready and take the photos, and I would like to point out that not only are the carpets from my living room, but many of the cast members are wearing my clothes (including Tim who is wearing my sweater and thankfully you can't tell how tight it is on him) - my apartment is still a bit of a disaster area, I haven't put everything away yet - I am lazy as we all know.

Now I must dash and finish writing the press release as well as schedule next week's rehearsals (can't do Wednesday night, Harry Potter tickets already purchased)!

Just thought y'all might find this kind of interesting!