3.3 The One About Projects, 1.0 and Various Upgrades

New projects are exciting.  :)

My business website is now up and running (www.whytheface.ca).  Considering that I designed the whole thing myself, with a little hand holding in the beginning, I’m quite happy with where it’s at as a first stab at it.  If you’ve never done anything like this before, I’d say the frustration level is not unlike that of Baby when Johnny Castle was trying to teach her how to dirty dance.  No designing with my laptop in a lake, tho. And no overbearing father trying to put me in a corner.  My dad happens to be very encouraging.  He just doesn’t quite understand what the site is or how to go about finding it.

Heck, you could even do what I did: give yourself a launching deadline of your Second City Conservatory Graduation Show, the one you’ve been working up to for a whole year, where you and your classmates wrote an hour and half show through improvisation in a ludicrous amount of time, because hey, you can put the website addy in the program;  still work in the evenings, audition during the days, and book gigs;  throw in a 3 day acting conference and awards night with wine, cute boys and pretty dresses; unimportant things like buying groceries and doing your laundry; oh, and have your grandfather pass away in the chaos of the final culminating week.

That’ll make it quite the experience.

Let’s say I was more than happy to set aside the self imposed ADHD for a moment so I could take a breath.

But then.

But then.  :)

An old project resurfaced.

A wonderful new theatre company here in Toronto, Theatre 20, was asking for submissions of musicals with an eye towards development.  A writing partner of mine and I had a fringe show from a few years ago which had gotten put on the back burner, with, oddly enough, this being year that we decided to take it out again. It’s a fun idea, I think.  Rough around the edges for sure.  And through the middle.  Alright, it needs a lot of work.  But we’re in love with the possibility of it.  And we were fortunate enough to get a time slot to go in and chat about it.   It was a good meeting with some hard questions.  You know the hard questions:  the ones where you feel like your soul is being ripped about and there’s no way you can actually articulate what it is you want to for some reason.  And once that minute is over, and you realize you made it through the little storm that all your insecurities threw at you, your head starts churning about where to go from here.  How to incorporate the answers to the questions they had and what questions those questions spark.  End of the day, they’d like to see our show developed further than where it’s at before they’d feel comfortable pairing us with resources on their end, and they’d love to look at it again when we’re further along.

Oh, the happiness.

And then a second old project resurfaced.

At the above mentioned acting conference (for ACTRA members, specifically), I took some workshops that focused on writing.  As I was sitting, listening to the speakers, dutifully taking notes of what I found interesting or helpful, an old idea started batting me about the back of the head, encouraged by two different factors: one was a point someone made that companies have a general interest in family shows that have strong, female characters; the second was a lady on a panel that dealt specifically with family oriented shows, and her willingness to discuss your half page with you, not necessarily because it might work for her company, but to merely give you guidance.  The treatment I wrote for a family television show featured a boy, but as soon as those two factors merged in my head, my subconscious staring whispering “What if you make your lead a girl?”.  This was horribly exciting to me, so much so I almost ditched the wine and cheese afterwards to run home, pull it out and start making changes.  One lunch meeting with a friend who’s taking on a role as a sort of creative consultant later, and that’s off to the races again, too.

And there’s only so much time in a day.  There are many other ideas kicking around in my head, some newbie, the start from scratch kind that haven’t even seen a pen and paper yet (yep, I do a lot of writing longhand), and some that are working out the many kinks that happen as things move along.

They all hold my attention and are equal parts thrilling and maddening.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.