I’m at the Brave New Workshop right now.

This morning concluded my six week audition course. I feel encouraged because I’ve learned so much in such a short amount of time. The scene I had to memorize went off without a problem — memorization and all. I think I’m getting better at the stuff. The most encouraging bit of it all is that I learned today that memorization gets easier the more you do it. Apparently, it’s a “memory muscle.” Oh this is encouraging!

My new “actor” plan includes memorizing something every day. Anything! I think I’ll start with poetry. I’ve got it all figured out. Read aloud before bed. Sleep. Wake up early and work out. Then enjoy coffee and a review the script. Apparently, that’s all there is too it.

So I’m at the BNW right now. Tonight is the opening of the 50th Anniversary show. I have to be here tonight. Have to. But I’m supposed to be re-recording dialogue for a film I worked on this fall. Grr…

After my class, I was coming into the lobby and ran into the one and only Dudley Riggs. I first met Dudley during the opening of A Very Ikea Christmas. At the time, I was an usher and had the incredible priviledge to seat him and his guest. Over the years, I’ve had few word “conversations” with him, but I’ve never forgotten them. Anyway, so I see him in the lobby and I say hello. He tells me I need to be at the show tonight and now I feel like the hand of God directly has touched my life with a “You MUST be here…”

I wish I could have been apart of Dudley’s reign at the BNW. Because he’s kinda wacky and led the theatre for 39 years into all sorts of territory and never backed down. He wasn’t great at finances and the theatre is by no means a cash-cow (quite the opposite actually), but it’s here. And it will always be his. His time didn’t compete with cable television or the internet or even decent television shows… People came to the theatre and in some way, small or large, it made a difference in their lives or how they saw things…

That’s the reason I want to be involved. That’s the reason I want to be here. I want to make that difference. I want people to see the satirical point being made. I want people like that in my life. I knew when I was 16 that I had to be apart of the little comedy theatre I’d never heard of and now I have been. I am far from done here. I’d pour my soul into this place because it just feels right. I can’t put it in any other way. The building, the people, the experience, the message, the everything — is magical in a very dishevled way.

To the Brave New Workshop, you are and continue to be a huge point of happiness in my life. Here’s to you and all the joy you bring the world. May 50 more years come as “easily” as the last 50.