WEEK ONE

22 January 2008

3:00pm
First class of the last first day of school, ever.

3.31pm
Heath Ledger is discovered dead by a masseuse and housekeeper in his SoHo apartment, naked, face down on his bed.

I get the news as I come out of class at around 6pm. Patrick's mother has sent him a text message. She lives in Ohio. At the moment we hear the news the paramedics are removing his body, in a bag, from the apartment. Tmz.com are running a live video stream for your viewing pleasure. Although if we wanted to, we could probably run over in about fifteen minutes, and watch it in person. I don't want to. I'm more shocked than I would have imagined. If I could have imagined.

It makes me think of Denver, my lovely irish bartender, who died March last year in much the same manner. Except with Denver it was a West Village apartment. Around the corner from mine. And I'd been inside it. I'd managed not to think about him for a while.

7.03pm
At 'Automatic Slims' I refuse my first drink for the 'month of sobriety', a post new-year challenge set by my concerned father. Later at 'Tortilla Flats' I pass on drinks 2 and 3. Turns out to be a most inopportune time as in meeting with production company discussing potential remounting of 'Limonade Tous Les Jour' with Austin Pendleton. Everything crossed by Fall I'll be legitimately employed in an equity 'off-Broadway' production.


23 January 2008

4.30pm
Meet with 'Director of Professional Development' to choose headshots. Good time not to be feeling insecure about physical appearance. It helps if you can think of person in photo as someone else.

'We' decide on two.

The 'Seriously Serious' actress, and the 'I want to work with this chick, slightly "whacked-out" (?) commerical shot'.

These will be sent out to the mysterious 'industry' in two strategic mailings.

After the meeting I refuse drink #4 at Slims, and instead share a goat cheese salad with Andrew and head to the East Village for first rehearsal of Tennessee Williams' 'Talk to me like the rain, and let me listen'. Opening February 14.


24 January 2008

Second rehearsal for 'Rain'. We do a physical improv and another read through. The play basically consists of two long monologues. I feel boring though trust the play is not.

Send the photos through to the photographer to organise touch ups and prints. Must do first mail out by Monday.

Having trouble sleeping. Can't decide whether it's the million things buzzing around my head, or lack of alcohol in my system.


25 January 2008

11.08am
Check in at ISS (International Student Services). This is my half yearly reminder that (despite all that hard work on a convincing neutral american accent) I am a foreigner and tolerated in this country only under the strictest of conditions, also with a definite expiry date.

3.00pm
First read through of 'Scab' a new play for director's full length festival happening at school in May. This will be my last project at school. Ever. I'm playing a 22 year old history student, beginning grad school.

10:00pm
Dan and I head to Amsterdam pool hall (where Jerry Seinfeld spent the best part of every week for 18 months working on his pool game after the show had finished and he came back to New York with a pocket full of serious cash and no responsibilities). The hardest part is waiting at the bar for our table to be free. Dan has 'tonic water' and I have a 'soda water'. The bartender gives us a look that screams 'The fundamentalist Christians have arrived!'

Probably avoid about six drinks over the course of the next two and a half hours. Watch with mild curiousity as others around us become increasingly intoxicated. Certainly no judgement, just curiousity and mild horror that that's usually me.


26 January 2008 - AUSTRALIA DAY

Drinks avoided: 6 (conservative estimate).