Lots of links!

First of all, there's the article from the NYTimes about what it's like to audition for Saturday Night Live, in front of Lorne Michaels.  It's in that multiple voice interview style and has voices from throughout the series (Chevy Chase through Dana Carvey, then Molly Shannon, Jimmy Fallon and even current cast folks).  There are links to extended interviews with a few folks, and within all of that, there's footage of Kristin Wiig at the Groundlings, and the original auditions of Dana Carvey, Will Farrell, and Jimmy Fallon.  There's also a video interview with Fred Armisen.  It's a really eye-opener to how comedy looks easy but comes with so much anxiety, and the silence in the videos is excruciating.  Worth checking out.

Vegan side note: if you like eating veggies and even if you don't, you gotta get on Thug Kitchen.  Completely NSFW - lots of foul language and f-bombs, but great recipes and ideas for eating healthy food made from plants, and lots of capping on snack food companies.

Had a big audition last week.  Because there's nothing concrete to remember these accomplishment/milestone moments, I like to reward myself with objects that help me remember these successes.  In this case, it was a trip to the Muji store in SOMA where I found these socks.  Which are awesome.  What can I say, sometimes it's the little things.

I believe I've mentioned the Geena Davis Institute for Gender Representation in Media at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism, yes?  A new report from them on gender inequality in the top 500 films from 2007-2012 tells it like it is.

And finally, this woman just rocks my world with her talent, originality, creativity and refusal to let others shape her image and message.  Here's something from the album that comes out next week, and here's something I just found on youtube this week: her first studio album, unreleased.  The track that starts at 1:43 may be my new 'I just auditioned and now I'm done' celebration.

Counting Actors August 2013

Here are the 12 shows for August.  The Counting Actors project is now at 310 shows, so as promised last month, I'll be doing some posts looking at data from shows 201-300 throughout September (similar to what I've done with the first 200 shows).

If you want to learn more about the project, read posts from previous months, and learn how to submit statistics yourself, please take a look at this page.

12 shows counted:
Tides/Sweet Bird of Youth
San Francisco Shakespeare Festival/Macbeth(3 female non-speaking actors in this production are company interns)
Marin Theatre Company/Good People
Berkeley Rep/No Man's Land
Marin Shakespeare/All's Well that Ends Well
TheatreFirst/Orlando (title role in this piece changes gender from m to f and is played by a f actor)
TheatreWorks/Other Desert Cities (co-produced w/San Diego's Old Globe)
Cal Shakes/Lady Windemere's Fan (male actor on this production played two f characters - duchess of Berwick and Lady Jedburgh)
SF Playhouse/Grounded
Z Space & Word for Word/In Friendship (evening of interlocking short stories by one author presented theatrically, 2 directors 1 m 1 f)
Monday Afternoon Productions/The Goat or Who is Sylvia?
Wily West/Lawfully Wedded (interlocking short plays by 3 authors, 2 m, 1 f)

The Stats:
8 male directors, 5 female directors
11 male writers, 3 female writers
96 total actors
51 male actors, 45 female actors
46 union actors, 50 non-union actors
23 union men, 23 union women
71 local actors, 9 non local actors

Thank you to those from audience, cast and artistic staff who contributed stats: Phoebe Moyer, Karen Thomson Hall, Sheila Devitt, Scott Ragle, Anne Hallinan and Rebecca Ennals

Please keep talking about what you're reading here, and if you see a show or are working on a show with performances in September, it takes about 5 minutes to share the stats with the project.

A post with September shows will go up between Oct 1 and Oct 5.

Three novels I read this summer that you should read too

A common thread in all three of these books is that while significant portions of each book take place in the US, none of the protagonists are US born, so each of these books examines American culture from an outsider perspective. Each book stands on its own, but taken together, they add up to a fascinating look at the similarities and differences in the challenges that face contemporary immigrant women.

1) We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo - When we first meet Darling, she's 10 years old and living in Zimbabwe.  The early sections of this book do that thing I love where a child or young person describes what they're observing in the world around them, but that they don't fully comprehend yet as an adult reader, I have more context for the things that the character is describing.  I love that!  Later in the book, Darling comes to the US and lives in Detroit, experiencing her teen years and immigrant assimilation simultaneously.  I found this book incredibly moving, especially the chapter where she describes what it's like to have to speak in English when it's not your first language.

2) The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Domincyzk gives us three women - one who immigrated to the US as a child, then went back to Poland for summers; one who came to the US as an adult; and one who didn't leave Poland.  All three lives intertwine as the story moves both back and forth in time, and back and forth between  Brooklyn and Kielce, Poland.  Another great insight into a life that straddles two cultures.   I was fascinated with the Polish custom of using different versions of a child's name.  I'll admit that I still don't understand it completely, but I loved that the author didn't make it easy.  Warning: this book will make you want to eat pierogies!  I was lucky that I already had some in my freezer.

3) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie - Ifemelu, the protagonist in this book, leaves Nigeria for the US as a college student.  It is a heady look at race relations in the US  (Ifemelu blogs about the experiences and observations of a 'non-American black').   Obinze, Ifemelu's high school boyfriend. is present throughout the book as well.  We see both of these characters in contemporary Lagos and Princeton, as well as in flashbacks to student days.  Again, lots of new perspective and insights in different cultural experiences for me - the hair braiding that takes place at the beginning of the book is a strong example of this.

I really enjoyed reading all three of these novels, and together they made a powerful triptych that gave me a lot to think about in terms of privilege and experience of outsiders in a new culture.  A bonus - these three books describe their non-American locales so strongly and specifically, it was like I took trips to Zimbabwe, Poland and Nigeria!