Umm...Yeah, It's February....

So, its a quiet Saturday night and I decided to take it easy and finally get a chance to stop and catch up with life.

It's a been a great month and a half. This semester started off beautifully. I gotta say, this 2nd year has really been a gift in so many ways. I feel like I'm just beginning to see the training take shape. Ever since my experience in The Tempest, I've been able to see how I've grown in the past year and a half. Its great to be able to chart your own development as an artist. I feel really blessed.

Right now we're working on The Playwright's Festival plays. They're all plays written by the students in the Playwriting Fellowship Program here at Juilliard. I'm in a play called "The Hard Sell" by Andrea Ciannavei. I'm really loving the play, loving the process and especially loving the direction. Daniel Aukin is directing and I admire his delicate "hands-off" approach. I think its great because it allows me to simply trust my instincts, which is something over the past year and half I've run away from. It's been difficult to follow my instincts in other shows we've done here because oftentimes I confused instincts for old habits. I'd make a choice that was simply familiar as opposed to what would work for the moment. But now I've gained the tools to be able to know what to do to make a moment make sense. That's so liberating! Working with Daniel has allowed me the freedom to playaround with ideas and not feel like I'm "doing something wrong". It's creatively empowering!

In other Juilliard news, over this semester I've been part of the movement to help revamp The 'Yard Reading Series. Originally it was just meant to be a platform for premiering new works in a casual play-reading format. Now we've expanded the concept to include and Open Mic Series as well as guest artist talks, and collaborations with other student clubs. I'm really excited about what it could become. Its just particularly challenging with our busy schedule. I also tend to be the type of person that hates doing things halfway. So its difficult when you get a grand idea that you'd like to execute, but there's just not enough time to organize it. Difficult, but definitely a reality. However, we're in the process of organizng an Open Mic for next week on Valentines Day. We'll see what it will become, we think it could potentially be very exciting....we've got a week.

Also...I was selected to be a part of a team of Juilliard students to go to Botswana this summer and teach theatre to young adults in the Setswana region. I'm pretty thrilled, but it's a 5 week program. Pretty long but potentially a life-changing experience. Spain last summer was such a necessary experience, and I'd love to do something very similar to that again, but I'm finding that variety is the spice of life and this summer I decided to apply to a bunch of summer trainging programs as well as this Botswana teaching team. I deeply believe last summer was about reconnecting with my artist inside. BUt I think this summer is about using the tools that I've learned so far as well as finding an opportunity to learn more. Also I think its a great ime to begin the pre-packaging process for my life after Juilliard. Getting a website together, a voiceover reel, and a coaching business started, all the tools to get my life rolling upon graduation.

I recently had a revelatory conversation with a friend a few days ago, we were on the phone chatting and at the dame time the radio was on. Ironically a asong came on the radios that was quite a few years old. It was the song that I remember saying: "I hope to be chillin' in my dorm room someday when this song comes on." I don't know why it was an image that was so ingrained in my mind from the moment I first heard the song. I've always been a believer in pre-memories, that you can essentially have a memory of something before it happens, thus confirming it as a part of your future. This song came out over ten years ago, and it wasn't unitl thia fated afternoon that I finally heard it on the radio, while chillin' in my bedroom. Crazy....and amazing! This incident has led me to the revelation that I have to begin creating more pre-memories. ThatI need to begin envisioning myself in places I've always wanted to be: on the red carpet, in my new huge house in the hills, directing my own projects on stage and screen...doing it all. And I need to be specific, because all de ja vu is , is a pre-memory. A scent, a color, a place...it all comes together as if you've been there before. Because you fated yourself to be there. I want to have the power to align my fate to put me in the places I want to be. I do believe we're that powerful. This year and especially this summer is about putting that belief into practice.