bitches be crazy

One evening in September of 2009 a group of actors, directors and writers came together in Manhattan to create a series of 10-minute one-act plays for AWE Creative Group’s 24Hour PlayFun. The teams were chosen at random, and each play shared the same opening line, same random line, and use of the same prop. This was the birthplace of Crazy Bitches! , a story of Momma and her two haggard daughters, Cantina Marie and Lisa Marie, and the men they entertain/abduct. I had the good fortune of being drawn from a hat to work with the writer, David Slate, and I’ve been performing it ever since.

The story is an absurd comedy, one that involves sex, serpents, cannibalism, donkeys, Mexican jail, tattoos and sausage. There are many reasons we each keep coming back to perform again. It has, over the last two years, been one of the most rewarding theatrical experiences of my career. In a city of individuals, where everyone is busy and set out to succeed on their own, the bitches have surpassed stereotype and found loyalty to one another. Against all odds, the majority of us have come back and made the time to play with each other. If I had known when I first moved to New York eight years ago that I would have the opportunity to continue to perform a play that was written specifically for me, with people I loved and cherished, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m still pinching myself.

One of the most rewarding aspects of this play is the audience reviews we receive. After a dear friend of mine watched our recent performance, he told me it reminded him of why he got into theatre in the first place: because it was fun! What a concept. I have been acting since I was a child, and certainly was first interested in this career because it was fun. I want to play, to enjoy, to create characters and relationships on stage. Since that time has passed there have been moments when it was easy to lose sight of what first intrigued me. Somewhere along the line a different kind of pressure is exposed and one can forget about the pleasure of acting. I am a trained actor and I take my work seriously, and I also perform in a variety of styles. No matter how dramatic or silly the play may be, I believe it is important to put in the table work. However, when the joy in sharing the story of the play is lost, the audience stops caring to watch. There is nothing worse than watching an actor uncomfortable or disenchanted on stage. It has been a gift to rediscover the amount of fun I can have while acting, and I am convinced that is why our audiences keep coming back. Crazy Bitches! encourages the actors to be as ridiculous as possible, and the audience and actors alike get to reap the benefits.

The excitement of this play stimulates ideas from the entire team. The writer has plans to extend the play further, we have talks of taking it on an East Coast tour, filming it for webisodes or a short film, etc. It is extremely thrilling to be part of such a twisted, perverse package. Right now we seem to have found our home in gay bars, namely the Stonewall Inn, the perfect place to try new things and play to a quirky and receptive audience. We have performances coming up May 30, 31, June 6 and 7, and assuredly more on the way, if not at Stonewall then at other venues.

What I have learned from the success of Crazy Bitches! is that audiences want to watch people act like fools on stage, and that I am honored to oblige. I will continue to play Lisa Marie, the badass Southerner who spent months in a Mexican jail for smuggling heroin across the border, for as long as the people will let me. I look forward to the future adaptations of this infectious tale, and can’t wait to play with my friends again on the 30th.

posted by jeanne lauren smith

a sold artist

When I was little I wanted to be an artist.  I was pretty good, I even had the drive necessary to make that career happen.

I had no vision for what my life as an artist should look like.  I had no vision of myself or how I would live or act.  I didn’t imagine myself living in New York attending my latest art opening wearing a beret and a black turtle neck.  I knew only that my love for making art was pure and that I was happy while doing it.

In elementary school I was always the best artist in class and I milked my role as such, acting humble sometime rejecting compliments with “No, I’m not that good.”  When I got to high school I began to notice that in terms of artistic growth my peers were surpassing me.

I’d become lazy and impatient with the process.  I knew the basics, that everything in its most pure form is just simple geometric shapes, how to place light and create proper shadows, and how to use perspective to create depth.  I knew how to implement these concepts I just didn’t have the patience to take the necessary steps.  It was apparent that if I could make those essentials work for me I could be good, without them my work was off.  Out of embarrassment I stopped making art.

I replaced my desire for visual art with the desire  to be a rock star.  I could fully envision 

what my life as a hard edged tortured rock star would look like; ripped jeans, flannel shirts, a sweaty audience begging me to play my hit song before I smash my guitar into a thousand splinters expressing my anguish.  Eventually this died too as again I grew impatient with the guitar and refused to practice chords or scales.

After my dream of being a rock star faded I put my efforts into being an actor.  Again I fully envisioned my life on stage; speaking the words of Shakespeare, Chekov, Pinter, and Albee.  I eventually went to college to continue to pursue this ambition only to realize as a junior that I was too lazy to practice my skills necessary to grow.  Not only that but the day to day life of an actor seemed severely disappointing.  After turning down a role to hold a spear in a production of Hamlet I officially retired.

I have always loved writing but before college I had never thought of it as a legitimate career choice.  After I stopped acting I put all my efforts into writing.  For the first time I found that I enjoyed the process just as much as I reveled in the product.

Like my visual art aspirations, I had no idea what my life as a writer should look like.  I knew only that I was happy while doing it from start to finish.  I found that no matter how great the struggles, no matter how disappointing the rejection I still wanted to write.  

This was why I found what happened last October to be rather ironic.

My senior year of college I copied a picture of Audrey Hepburn that I’d seen at IKEA for Jaime.  This awakened a desire in me to begin painting again, not for a living but just for fun.  In the next few years I amassed more paintings than I could fit on my limited wall space so quite canvases a few ended up in the back of a closet. 

Last October as we prepared to move from Los Angeles to Seattle we held a yard sale.  It was more like a Fire Sale, as we were selling off just about everything but the essentials.  This included four paintings I’d done that I was ready to get rid of rather then haul back north.  My expectations were that someone looking for a cheap canvas to paint over would buy them.

When one woman picked up a black and white painting and asked how much, I was about to say $2 when Jaime grabbed my arm and spoke up.  “$5!” She said, the girl looked enthused and bought it.  Later I watched as a car made a sudden stop in the middle of the road, reversed and then a woman got out of the car to buy a specific pastel drawing.  Once again I sold this one for just $5 and she was thrilled with the new canvas she had to hang in her home.

By the end of the day I’d sold all but one painting.  Drunk with success I insisted the last canvas go for $5 and no less, the little Mexican man offered me $2 but I turned him down.  I can’t go around selling Brian Snider originals for $2, it would destroy the market.

It was then that I realized that I had done it.  My childhood goal was complete, I’d become a sold artist.  There were three of my paintings hanging in three separate southern LA homes.  I imagined that they would invite guests over for dinner and while sitting on the couch they would ask their hosts, “I love that painting.  Where did you get it?”  With pride they would reply “Oh, thats just a little thing I picked up at a garage sale in Los Feliz.”

this painting is unfinished

I did some mental math and taking in the cost of the canvas and supplies I figured that I’d made a negative $60 profit.  Not much but it was a start.  Now if only I could get someone to pay me, even if just $5, for my writing.

posted by: brian snider

what do you do?

this penguin wants to know what I do for a living

There is a question that I absolutely loathe, one that I can easily see coming, one that I hate to answer.  “What do you do for a living?”  I suspect that many artists and even some non artists hate this question as well.  I will focus specifically on artists because we have chosen a profession that often requires us to hold a day job.  In answering that question we have to make a choice between how we actually pay our bills and what is our career.

For me the answer is complicated, and usually it goes like this, “Well, I make my money as a ________, but the rest of the time I am a writer.”  This is just too much information, with more layers than the questioner was expecting.  The first part says that I make my money doing one thing, but I don’t really care about it.  The second part says that there is this other thing I do care about, but I don’t actually make any money at that and I want you to know that is what defines me and not what I do to make money (holy shit).

That is what the question really comes down to, what defines you?  People assume that how you make your money is something you went to school for, something you love, something that they can draw conclusions from, about who you are.  That doesn’t really apply to me and all the rest of us who have a day job to support our ultimate career goals.  I don’t really care about the various ways I’ve made money and aside from the fact that they employ me, I am not defined by those jobs.  I fear that if I leave out how I eventually want to make money the questioner will get the wrong impression of me.

Just the other night this question was asked of me.  I was prepared to give my standard answer when I paused, in a split second decision I said something else.  “I’m a freelance writer,” I answered confidently.  This wasn’t exactly false, but not totally true either.  In my fantasy life this is how I make a living.  It’s not like I said I was a lawyer or a computer software designer.  I know a lot about being a writer and can hold a meaningful intelligent conversation on the subject.

Does it really matter that technically this is not true?  I was more engaged in the conversation because I could discuss the art of writing and not, HVAC or pharmaceuticals.  I wasn’t being interviewed for a newspaper article and I wasn’t asked to sign an affidavit.  So what is the harm?

From now on in conversations and all non legally binding documents I am a freelance writer.  I won’t shy away from the fact that this is not how I make my money should they inquire further.  But why would they?  Wouldn’t they rather hear what I’m passionate about and not something that I just do because I have to?

I suggest everyone try this out, artists and non artists alike.  Don’t just lie, but if you’re a practicing writer, actor, director, dancer, painter, designer, or musician it shouldn’t matter that this isn’t how you make your money.  Perhaps one day you will.  After all is saying that you’re any one of these things different than the thousands of twenty one year olds out there claiming to work for ad agencies or law firms, when really they’re just unpaid interns?

the first year is the hardest part i

LA riots.  need i say more?

One thing that I heard over and over my first year in Los Angeles when things were difficult was “Don’t worry, the first year is the hardest.  The second year gets better.”  I admit that I am guilty of saying this to others in their first year.  We say this like a Junior or a Senior in college might say to an in coming freshmen.  The truth about that saying no matter how true it is (because it’s totally true) is that when you first move to LA the last thing you want to hear from someone is that this first year is going to be shit, you begin to hear it so often that you tell yourself this and it becomes your mantra.  Then before you know it that saying has become a self fulfilling prophecy.

I don’t know if there’s ever a good time to move to Los Angeles but if there is, late 2007 definitely was not it.  I would go so far as to say that the only worse times to move there would have been the 1992 riots or the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

The week we arrived the big news story was the impending writers strike.  Everyone openly said that an agreement could be reached without striking but deep down in the center of the brain which holds all our pessimism we knew that there was going to be a strike.  As we all know it couldn’t be avoided and it lasted from November 5th to February 12th, during which production shutdown on just about everything.  Add that on top of an economy which was going down like the Titanic, and there were Jaime and I walking the decks looking for jobs.

Good Luck!

Due to the strike thousands of production crew members whose productions had been shut down were suddenly out of a job, then there were thousands more extras, stand ins and background actors who were also looking for work.  Last you can add to that rapidly shrinking pool all the other already out of work actors.  Available work went from an olympic size swimming pool to one of those little inflatable ones for children, with people spilling out the edges.

Since I didn’t have the luxury of being picky I will willing to take just about anything to get a paycheck.  The only incoming cash flow we had was the balance of my two week vacation from my previous job which when it arrived would be about $1000.  There was $150 which I would be receiving thanks to the CDC who was in town and randomly selected me to fill out two questionnaires and take a physical examination. (Our time in LA was full of these little money making surprises which often managed to keep us afloat.) Then there was Jaime’s unemployment which was about $200 a week.  Aside from those we were just burning through money.

By the end of the first week of job hunting I’d turned up empty but Jaime had managed to get two interviews, both restaurants both on Melrose.  A lesson for anyone in LA seeking a waiting job is, if you apply for it and don’t have to fight off 150 or so other aspiring actors then there is something wrong with the restaurant.

One day while driving through Hollywood I passed Beso, a trendy restaurant owned  by a desperate housewife.  The previous day I’d seen a “now hiring” sign up outside the main entrance.  Now there was a line of people out the door and around the corner.  Easily 200 people strong all vying for the same 10 jobs.  This was just their first day of hiring.

In LA applying for restaurant jobs is akin to going in and auditioning for a casting cattle call.  Each restaurant is catering to a specific audience and wants their wait staff to look the part.  Just like an acting audition you’ll probably find yourself in line with dozens if not hundreds of people who look just like you.  Hipsters, models, rockers, hippies you name it, just like acting you’re going to be typecast and they will be hiring based on that role.

The first of the two restaurants Jaime had an interview with was one of those restaurant/club/bar places where they try to do a little bit of everything.  He was some kind of Eastern European dissent and though I never saw him I imagined a stocky guy with balding hair that he hid by shaving it completely.  He wore a sports coat with a brightly colored shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum, he had thick Brillo pad hair emerging from beneath that shirt and gold around his neck and on his fingers.  Jaime didn’t trust him and so this was the image I conjured of him.  Jaime’s second interview was for an upscale Cuban fusion restaurant called Xiomara run by a fiery Cuban woman named... Xiomara.  She ended up getting both jobs and chose Xiomara because she didn’t trust the other guy and because they wanted her to start that evening.

I was relaxing at home thinking the dominos were falling into place and that everything was going to be okay, when I got a cryptic text from Jaime saying “I don’t know about this.”  This was bad news because if a situation is a little bit dicy Jaime is always able find the positive within and work through it.  On the flip side if something is truly dicy  I will get texts like this one which amounted to her waving the white flag of surrender.  I began to worry that this job was not going to work out.

When she got home she explained her evening.  If you’ve ever been a waiter (I have not, though I have lived with one for seven years.) then you know that it is very unusual to start the night you are hired, it is even more unusual to start serving on your first night without any training or knowledge of the menu.  Her first table was a group of B-List actors and when one of them asked her what came with the “yucca blah, blah, blah,” she was forced to feign ignorance.  Asking for help was useless because the other employees hardly spoke any english.

I felt horrible for her being placed in such a tough situation.  What we needed most of all was money and when you need money you don’t quit jobs, but this job was going to be nothing but problems and offer little in compensation.  Jaime was scheduled for a double shift the following day and after completing the first half I picked her up and she told Xiomara that she would not be making her evening shift.  Just like that she was jobless again.

I on the other hand had an interview with H&M for a customer service position in their store opening at Hollywood and Highland.  My interview was held in the outdoor food court atop the Beverly Center which... you just have to go to the Beverly Center to understand it.  The following week I was called in for a second group interview at their LA offices on Sunset in West Hollywood, which seemed a little backwards to me.  Prior to the interview they had us sign a form stating that I would not reveal what activities actually occur within the group interviews.  Since I was already sued by a national corporation last year I will refrain from mentioning the details here.  I will say that it involves group oriented activities too childish and complicated to explain.  If you find that you’re really that interested to know what H&M feels that you need to be able to do in order to sell cheap clothes for  minimum wage, then you can buy me a beer and I’ll tell you.

I left the interview without ever hearing from them again which I really wasn’t too broken up over.  I wanted a job but after that interview I could feel that I really, really didn’t want that job.  After three weeks four interviews and one job later, we were both still jobless and getting more desperate.

I gave up a difficult but well paying job in Seattle when we moved.  A job which is nearly always in demand.  A job I easily could have transferred to Los Angeles.  Instead I thought I would start over at something new, I was just hoping that I hadn’t shot myself in the foot.

To be continued....