Re-Sketch: Welcome to Semester 2

My good friends. I'm sorry for the hiatus, please forgive me.

"No, no," you say, "it has been too long. Broken promises like this one are the reason we have trust issues." I understand, but I really have been trying to write you. Really! My silence has not been for lack of effort. It's just that every time I started writing a post I would either fall asleep mid sentence or have to go to some rehearsal or other or remember that I had some crazy homework assignment to finish.

"Wait," you say. "You have time for sleep?!" Not really. Therein lies the issue.

"All right," you press on. "But what is this 'homework' idea you keep speaking of. You're a drama major. You have... Homework?"

Just to give you a taste, we had to...
-analyze, memorize, stage, rehearse, and perform a modern realism scene
-analyze, memorize, and create a situation in which we would respond to someone with one of Shakespeare's sonnets
-analyze, memorize, stage, rehearse, and perform a Shakespeare scene
-come up with a nun costume
-memorize a bible verse and come up with a time where we, as a nun/priest would say that verse
-lose a ring? (it's much more complicated and in depth than that but if we're being honest I have no idea how to even explain that one to you...)
-See the Adler company show, which was Arabian Nights

-among many, many other wild and fantastical things

...all while rehearsing a musical and doing all of my homework for my two academic classes (which include tons of reading and writing, an essay, and a midterm).

"Ohhh, so that's what's been keeping her busy this quarter term!"

No no, my friends. That is what's been keeping me busy this week.

"Our Kaila. She's handling this all so well."

Don't be fooled into thinking I'm great at all of this. The weather got warm and my body freaked out, so my throat is angry and my lungs have been itchy for the past two days. Shakespeare is hard. Improv is stressful for a control freak who isn't naturally funny. Ninety percent of the words that come out of my writing teacher's mouth confuse me. It's tough, but it's all in good fun. I've made friends, I've made mistakes, I've made great strides forward. I hope. But man, I've smiled a lot.

Sure I haven't written much, but not for lack of things to write about.

So here goes, in no particular order.

I've started running into friends I know from outside of school, which really makes me feel like I actually live in New York City.

I got to see Kinky Boots with a friend whose smiles are as big as her heart. (Cheesy, yes. But true, so forgive me.)

I've learned that you make your own luck and that you might as well fail big. (Like my grammar in that sentence.)

On a whim I auditioned for Disney World. Sure, nothing came of it, but hey it was fun and I wore heels and didn't fall.

Let me say, here and now, that it is a little bit surreal to be playing one of my dream roles in my first ever school show and my first show in the city. Honestly it's so bizarre that every time I get up there I sort of space out a little and don't exactly get across the idea that I meant to. Hopefully I'm gonna get over that soon. (We've got about four weeks before we open, though, so I'll definitely be in check by then.)

In the last couple of days the city has been unbelievably pretty. It's so warm that people are leaving their coats at home and strangers on the street are smiling. Yup, smiling. It's pretty incredible.

The other day I was getting into an elevator and I dropped my phone. Then I bent down to pick up my phone, and I dropped the Reese's candy that I was bringing to a rehearsal for my scene partner. So in unsurprising news, I'm still sort of a mess.

I have seen so many cute dogs. You might think that this is a small thing. It is not.

Last week we had a rehearsal for Dogfight in which an ex marine (is anyone ever really an ex marine?), Wes, led the whole cast through a mock training day, complete with making our beds and lining up for the chow line. Just a little bit of background info--Dogfight is about a group of young Marines and the party that they throw the night before they go off to fight in the Vietnam War. Because of the subject matter, it was super incredible to watch the boys go through mock-training as Wes (a man seemingly made completely of steel) turned our group of lovable talented theater teddy bears into... well, marines. Wes's wife was also a wonderful addition to the rehearsal room. As an accomplished choreographer, she had such a good eye for details and such an honest idea of what the show meant to her.

I took a midterm and I don't think I bombed it. Due to the fact that I actually paid attention in class, a guy in my class pretty much bummed my notes off of me, which should have been annoying but was actually pretty flattering. See, this homeschooled bookworm didn't have the chance to get upset when people cheated off her hard work, so it was honestly kinda nice. Especially because I didn't give him the full copy. (He was supposed to give me the link to the Google doc to which he was using my notes to gain access, which he didn't. Two thumbs up though, cause my full copy got me through the whole test.)

I saw a show Off-Broadway tonight called Robber Bridegroom in which an NYU Tisch alumnus was A) pretty darn amazing and B) SO excited to see a group of freshman Tischies outside the theater after the show.

I accidentally auditioned for a student film today. I was waiting for a friend in the lobby of a dorm and some dude asked if I was there to audition for the student film. I told him that I had no idea what he was talking about, but asked him about the project, found out he was living a friend of a friend next year, and next thing I knew I was reading a side with a guy in front of a camera. Thanks college.

So yeah. I think I'm back on track with this whole writing thing. I'm un-falling off the bandwagon, if you will.

Hi, my name is Kaila, and I'm addicted to this city.

(Maybe I should have put that bit in the beginning...)

Do you want to watch or do you want to shoot off confetti cannons?

My dear friends, with much happiness I can say I am back in the city and have conquered my first weekend of northern winter.

You guys, it is deceptively cold. It's the kind of cold that at first makes you think, "Nope, I can do this," and then two minutes later, "Huh, my fingers are kinda numb, I'll put on my gloves," and then in the next thirty seconds, "Interesting, my ears are burning. I guess it's time for a hat now."

These are the thoughts that were flurrying through my mind as I trekked through the cold to the midtown Hilton for the first ever Broadway Convention.

Last month, I submitted an application to volunteer at BroadwayCon. I was accepted the next week, and stayed excited until the moment I walked through the door on Friday morning. They had an hour-long orientation session, and then we were loose for the day until our respective shifts started. Mine wasn't until nine that night, so I grabbed my day pass and my volunteer shirt and set off to explore for the day.

The Spring Awakening cast was in the first room I walked into. I watched part of their panel before wandering into others and really just taking it all in.

I don't know if you've ever been in a room where you can make any obscure reference within your main frame of knowledge and someone within earshot is bound to catch it and understand, but it's such a euphoric feeling. Halfway through the day I felt silly for even thinking of theater references, as if I was subconsciously just trying to do it to fit in. That's how much I was in the right place.

Later, during the first day, a friend of mine and I were walking around the conference, exploring until we were ready to get in line to watch the opening ceremony and then the Hamilton panel (when we weren't working it was encouraged that we watch and enjoy), when the volunteer coordinator approached us.

"Hey you guys. What are you doing right now?"

I answered, "Just figuring out how to get in to see these next two events."

"Ok... would you guys like to watch the opening--if so that's totally cool--or would you like to watch it, or shoot off confetti cannons at the end?" She wagged her eyebrows.

"Shoot off confetti cannons, probably," my friend and I answered in unison.

"Great," She grinned. "You can come with me and watch it from the front, too."

This is the story of how I came to be crouched in the dark on the ground  of a Hilton ballroom with a confetti cannon aimed at Laura Osnes and Alice Ripley and so many others. This is also the story of how I got to watch the Hamilton panel a few feet away from the stage.

One of the jobs as a volunteer was making sure that the first five rows were only being used by people with VIP passes, so once the events started we got to sit on the ends of the front rows to keep people from sneaking in.

That said, not everything about this was a positive experience. People with strong intentions can be horridly mean. For instance, the vicious woman with the general pass and the sneering smile who intended to stay in her front row seat, or the photographer who snidely requested upon reading my tshirt, "Could you volunteer to move? I'm going to put my stuff there," as I stood at my station in front of a curtain partition.

Why, I wondered, was this biting negativity so jarring? I, as a seasoned older sister am totally accustomed to pushback from those around, so what about this was different? For one, these are grown adults who should know better, sure. But the bigger and more important reason is this: there were hundreds of people at this convention, and every single one of them was so enchanted with the fact that they get to be a part of this, stars included. This convention is so clearly by the people and for the people, and EVERYONE knows it. It's bigger than a theater convention, it's a large gaggle of oddballs who are being embraced for their habits of breaking into song and their inability to be "normal".

I have never been to an event this big with such a lack of stereotypes. There are people of every age here. Every. Single. One. Every income range, every race, every gender. There was no norm. And it was beautiful.

Everybody was in for a frozen surprise when the blizzard hit, snowing everyone into the city with no way to get out. This wasn't a problem for me of course, because most of the underground train lines were completely untouched, but it sure did affect a lot of the special guests who were trying to come in from out of town.

As of today, everything is back up and running. Everyone was able to come in for their respective events, including some of the cast of Something Rotten, some of the cast of the new show Disaster!, and Sara Bareilles, who even did an impromptu performance from her new musical, Waitress.

The entire weekend was a dream. At the very end they had a closing ceremony, and brought all of the volunteers and staff on stage to do a singalong of "Seasons of Love". From the stage you could look into the audience and see people in the first few rows literally sobbing because it was over.

All in all, I do think that this was a pretty ok to start my first week back. Classes start tomorrow and I haven't even wiped out in the snow yet. Success? I think yes.

It's an adventure

Here is the most important thing about my eyes: they are brown.

Yesterday, our movement teacher held one on one conversations with each of us, pretty much just to check in and ask us questions about how we feel her class is going. One of the questions she asked me was if I "liked my body." The little voice inside my head started to scoff, daring me to be just a little whinier, but I answered truthfully anyway.

"I... Appreciate what it's trying to do," I said, and my teacher laughed. "It sort of works against me sometimes, but we're figuring it out."

My teacher raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

I cringed. I usually tried to avoid this conversation at all costs. (I am forcing my fingers to put it out on the interwebs)

"Well, I have this retinal pathology?" The sentence came out of me as a question. "So I have blind spots that make it sort of hard to see. And, you know, dealing with the medications for it and how that changes everything..."

"Why didn't you tell me??"

I don't know what reaction I was expecting, but it wasn't that one.

Here's the thing. I spend 98% of every day telling inner-Kaila not to be so over dramatic. My eyes are a little messed up, but there are still two of them, and they still work, mostly. There are people who have it so much worse. So yeah, it was weird to have a teacher give immediate significance to something I try to belittle.

"Do the people in your group know?" She asked me.

"No," I shrugged. "I know how to deal with it, and I don't want it to change anything."

"So when I have all fifteen of you running through the space?"

"Yeah that's terrifying."

(I guess I should take a second to sort of back all of this up. So when I was twelve, I noticed that when I put my fist in a certain spot, it disappeared. Cool trick, right? We've all got blind spots. Then my first turned into my hand, spread out full. That's when I figured it was time to tell my parents.

There were a lot of different eye doctors on the windy road to Anita Agarwol, who just happens to be the leading doctor in the search for answers concerning the pathology with a big name that pretty much just means "white dot" or "blind spot" syndrome.

Eventually I became friends with all of the different nurses. All of the technicians knew me, and Anita Agarwol and I exchanged pictures of our dogs.

We spent seven hours at a time taking pictures, looking at the pictures, putting in eye drops, injecting dyes into my arm veins, and wearing contacts with wires in them. Party time!

Unfortunately, the blind spots grew, and my left one is bigger than the right, but as of now they're stable.)

"Then what must it like," you're all asking, "to have moved to one of the fastest moving cities in the world?"

It's an adventure.

Sometimes I bump into people that I just didn't see coming. Voices come from seemingly nowhere and sometimes I trip on trashcans that I just didn't see. Curbs are the worst and stairs are mean, but it's so completely doable. Also, the lights never go out, so the dark isn't a problem. I don't have to deal with driving in parking lots, so it's pretty much a breeze.

Last night at crew, my nightmare came true. I'm running sound for this play, which consisted of listening for "sound standby" and then "sound go", until it was discovered that the stage manager could be heard every time he opened his mouth. Then it became a series of hand signals. In the dark. Yeah. I don't think he understands how hit or miss this system is.

"It's good that I know this," my teacher said, putting away her chair. "I was going to tell you that you seem hesitant, but you obviously have a really good reason."

Now these blind spots aren't all bad. In an audition where the director is making me nervous? Sing my sixteen bars to the wall five and a half feet to his right. Poof! He's disappeared.

I can't work in a room with Lindsay Mendez

Why does 11 pm on a Sunday night find Kaila on the floor of the Tisch building making strands of paper snowflakes? It's kind of a long story.

Today felt like three days rolled into twenty-four hours, but lets start a week ago.

So I was sitting in Introduction to Theater Production, right? And this girl sitting in front of me is on her laptop. Now, I'm no Hermione Granger, but I have super puffy hair and it certainly does bother me when people aren't paying attention in class (and I'm Hermione Granger).

So there I was, glaring at the back of the girl's head in front of me, when all of a sudden her screen reminds me why I didn't want her on it in the first place--it distracts me completely. So, a few years ago I fell in love with this beautiful musical called Dogfight. Set during the Vietnam war, it centers around an awkward young guitar player who just wants to make the world a better place through music. And there was the Dogfight album cover art, right there on her computer, on a Facebook event marked 'NYU auditions'.

I pulled out my phone. (Bad, Hermione. Bad.) I was signed up to audition before the class was over.

Of course I couldn't help tapping the girl on the shoulder as she left.

"Excuse me, I know this is totally rude, but I saw your computer screen... Those Dogfight auditions, are they open to freshman?"

The girl shrugged. "I'm not sure, but a few of my friends and I were just going to go and see if they let us try out." I nodded. Made sense to me.

So, that Saturday, I headed to the Steinhardt building with a few friends, a headshot, and a resume. They had absolutely no problem with the fact that we were freshmen. In fact, they didn't even mention it.

"I really like your hair." That was the first thing they mentioned, "they" being the piano player.

"Thanks!" I chimed back, "I showered!" Immediate regret.

I sang my cut.

"I just have one question..." The director asked. "Can you sing more?" He phrased the question like he was on a game show.

I started from the beginning of the song and completely forgot the words. Ah, the dangers of only preparing a sixteen bar cut. Lesson learned.

"You can sing over [the pianist's] shoulder, that's completely fine," he offered, and I accepted. I finished, trying not to judge myself too harshly.

"Thanks so much. Please tell everyone outside that the callback emails will go out later tonight." I nodded, and out I went.

I had fuzzy post-audition brain for the rest of the day.

The callbacks came out that night, as promised.

My roommate and I were both called back for Rose and Marcy, the two female leads in the show. We were beyond excited. We worked on sides and music for the rest of the night.

And then I remembered.

I had tech in the morning.

Okay. So, the first year of a drama student's NYU life consists of many requirements, one of which being freshman crew for their Introduction to Theater Production class. Mine started on Sunday. Nine in the morning to midnight. Those were the hours. Except now I had a callback at twelve thirty with no definite end time.

I am the luckiest girl in the world.

I sent out a regretful email to the stage manager of the show that I'm crewing, and I got a swift reply. "Got it, thanks for letting us know!" It was as if a stone was lifted from my chest.

Side note: Downtown NYC is a ghost town at 8:30 am on a Sunday. NO one is around. It was amazing. I definitely suggest trying it sometime.

My next worry was to figure out when I would get to eat. The callback would take up at least my lunch break and I was hoping to meet with my Adler scene partner during my dinner break. I shouldn't have worried. I ordered lunch and dinner that morning but was too excited (ok, let's be real, nervous) to eat it.

I walked into the blackbox theater at 8:55 to find an eclectic mix of people who sort of resembled a real life super hero team.

The Lighting Designer. Short spunky hair and enough natural confidence to overthrow the entire tabloid industry, I can easily picture her in a green spandex suit with electricity spewing out of her palms. If I could draw I would totally create a comic to explain these people to you.

The Scenic Designer. He definitely would have been in yellow. No spandex for him though. Quieter and stubborn, he feels like the muscle of the group, even with plenty of brains.

The Sound Designer, probably in red, but not the angry kind. Friendly and efficient, I feel like he would be the super hero team member who always solves problems in the simplest of ways that the others were too busy arguing over to figure out. "Guys, while you were all discussing how to jump the raging river I found a bridge, right there!"

The Director. Absolutely a blue costume, and without one of those ridiculous mini skirts female Power Rangers always wear. She's thorough and precise and just quirky enough to be endearing.

Last but not least is the Stage Manger. Purple. The biggest smile and the best hug. Absolutely holds the group together with all the heart in the world.

I want to call them The Blackboxers, but I feel like that might be controversial. I'm open to suggestions.

We, another Tisch freshman and I, have the simple task of being their sidekick.

By ten am, I knew how to hang a light. By noon I had learned out to plug them all in and route the electricity efficiently. By 12:15 I was in a skirt with a folder of music under one arm.

Of course, Kaila being Kaila, I was late to the audition, cause I got kinda turned around on the five minute walk it takes to get from one building to the other.

A good sign of any audition for me is when a director knows and correctly pronounces my name. All you Janes and Marys are sitting at your computer scratching your heads right now. Here's the thing--My name isn't a common one, and therefore not super easy to remember. So, any time someone in the professional world puts in the effort I smile a little inside. It's a teeny tiny victory.

"Oh, good, Kaila," the director of Dogfight said when I finally walked in. "You're here."

There were probably around ten girls there for Rose and even more for Marcy. We sang a bit of one song and then they made some cuts and then were about six of us. Then we sang for Marcy and I think I was actually cut straight away. We sang again for Rose and then there were four of us. Then one more time and there were two. We did a scene with three boys and we sang a song with the two girls left for Marcy. Everyone else went home.

I kept getting messages from my crew assignment. "Think you'll be done soon?" "Could really use you back here." "Think you'll be done by 3:40?" It got later and later.

Finally, they had the two girls sing the beautiful and heartbreaking song "Pretty Funny" in its entirety.

I started to sing and they stopped me.

"Can you step back a little? Thanks. Also--and this goes for both of you--sing this song just completely raw and hurt. If you cry that's fine with me."

Who knew that that was what I needed to hear?

It's not that I feel like I sang the song well, it's that it felt so natural. I just kinda sang the song, like I did in my closet that one time in the middle of the night, and like I did in my shower every morning. The room actually clapped when I finished. I heard one of the women on the production team let out a strangled breath. The girl behind me whispered, "That just gave me actual goosebumps." The piano player stood up from his bench and hopped around a little, shaking out his arms.

"Do you need a minute?" The director asked. I realized he was asking me.

"Oh! No. No I'm ok," I answered, wondering if I had really convinced him that thoroughly.

Then it was the other Rose's turn, and I, in true and graceful Kaila fashion, spent the entire time trying to forget the fact that I was having a hard time breathing due to the fact that at the beginning of her performance I had choked on a sip of my water, sending it down the wrong pipe. Smooth.

After we finished that song they had us pair up with the two girls called back for Marcy and sing a duet with them. Then we sat outside and waited. It was almost five pm. Finally they called us back in.

"We've been discussing... how would you ladies feel if we double cast your roles? Of course you can say no."

Say no? Say no?! How could I possibly say no to the opportunity of doing Dogfight twice instead of what had been zero times just a week ago? Sure it isn't four, but two is better than zero! All four of us accepted immediately.

The cast list was emailed out twenty-seven minutes later.

I was in a crew meeting when I read it. I slipped my phone back into my pocket and glued my feet to the ground.

Do not jump up and down here, you silly head. Try to act professional. 

I didn't have to work for too long, though, because not long after we had a down moment, where I shared the news with our favorite Super Hero Stage Manager Man.

"Oh my goodness! Lindsay Mendez's character?" He asked when I explained the role, "I am only calling you Lindsay Mendez from now on. I'm going to put in the program, and crewed by Lindsey Mendez." I laughed. He began to walk away, finding little Stage Manger Man things to do. "I can't work with Lindsay Mendez in the room!" He joked, pretending to be in awe. (See? Don't you want someone fun like him to be in charge of keeping lowlife crime out of your city?)

So where do these snow flakes come in, you're all asking impatiently. Honestly they don't have that much to do with the day except for the fact that they really made me smile. The show on which I am working is set in the winter time, and instead of using stage snow, Director Woman decided to simulate the season with paper snowflakes. You guys they're actually beautiful. Some of them more so than others, but there are some really wonderfully crafted paper snowflakes. The two of us spent hours tying them together to strands that will presumably hang from something.

So, Dogfight won't perform until April, quite a while after all of the paper snowflakes melt, but for now I've got plenty to keep my hands full. Hopefully it'll be as interesting to you as it is me.

XOXO Cartoon Girl

When the TV show Nashsville aired for the first time, I watched it differently that I did anything else. I was paying less attention to the characters and the plot lines and looked more closely at the shoot locations. What school was that? Where was their favorite place to get coffee? Why was that the statue they chose to keep showing all the time?

I never even thought about what moving to New York would do to me.

Think for a second about all of the TV shows and movies that are filmed in New York City. Now I don't see nondescript city-ness, I see downtown. I see the upper east side. I see Washington Square Park and I see the Flat Iron district. I watch characters walking down the streets and I remember seeing the small store fronts on my walk to class every week. The whole entertainment aspect of film is different now because of it.

For instance, the line, "No no no. Ely and I don't go beyond 14th street," would have meant absolutely nothing to me half a year ago. Now I find myself thinking, "Oh my gosh I bet that character LOVES the Union Square Christmas Market.

I have a friend who has lived in the city all of his life and used to have the same complaint about every super hero movie.

"They always destroy New York," he'd shake his head,  "and it's just hard to watch. That's my city!"

Now, I don't feel completely comfortable calling NY my city, I mean, I've only been here for a few months, but I totally understand where he was coming from.

And films with NYU students in them? Forget about it. I'm shoulders deep in a film that is so terrible I'm rolling my eyes at every line, but she's an NYU freshman so I can't hit pause. It's a sickness.

I am currently thirty minutes into a terrible movie that I will not name, in which they are hanging out inside of a dorm room. A year ago I couldn't have imagined what a dorm room at NYU looked like, but right now I'm thinking about the fact that they just did a close up of Weinstein and I'm sifting through the names of the people that I know that live there.

Nothing is the same anymore, it's wild. I keep trying to come up with a better way to describe it than just using words like 'connection' and 'familiarity' cause it seems like more than that.

You know the show Gossip Girl? Anybody who even looks at me can probably tell it's not my style. Overly privileged NYC kids with lives full of petty drama? Not really my thing. Everyone here watches it, and I do too. I can't help myself. (In part it's because my best friend since diapers really wanted me to watch it. But it's mostly for the aforementioned reason.) To be honest I hate the show. I understand it's appeal, sort of, but I just kind of can't stand it. That said, I'm in the middle of season one and don't foresee myself stopping, at least not before the characters go off to college at--you guessed it--NYU.

So, next time you see some interesting (or not so interesting) movie centered around an NYU kid in the city, let me know. I'll probably wanna watch it.

the girl in the front row

Good theater destroys my posture. It's just a fact. The more into it I get, the more my arms fold in on themselves, my spine rounds, and my shoulders creep up until my whole being is reaching towards the stage in front of me. I am not a passive audience. My face in engaged, my mind is engaged, my heart is engaged. That actor must have worked so hard to make that movement so smooth. What must that character be thinking?

Good theater never lasts long enough. It is my greatest critique about the art form. Sure, I'm familiar with the theory that all good things must come to an end, I remember my father saying something about union laws, and my mother pointed out that at some point the performers have to go home, but still. It's like having the most beautiful snapshot flashed in front of your face and then being asked to simply hold on to the memory forever.

I once heard that every time we remember something we are in fact only remembering the last time we thought about it, which means that every time we recall our favorite show we are changing it just a little bit more from the way we experienced it the first time. I hate this idea. I want to be able to preserve the memory in my brain forever; pristine and unchanged. I think this is where my  habit of needing radio silence after a show comes from.

After a good musical, I don't want to listen to anything. Not the show's album, not un-intrusive elevator music, not humming. Nothing. Just the memory of the performance that I just saw. I just want to sit cross legged by myself on my bed and recount the night. Which is what I am now doing. Except this time I'm letting you in on the process.

For those of you who don't know, the Hamilton lottery, or the Ham4Ham, as many affectionately call it, is kind of the highlight of the theater world right now. The show's creator, the brilliant Lin Manuel-Miranda, noticed that the show's lottery (a free name-drawing experience where 21 front row seats are given away for ten dollars cash each) was attracting hundreds of people every night that were going home empty handed. He decided that he wanted to do something for these fans that believed so strongly in him and his show.  Before each lottery drawing he and a few members of the cast would come out in front of the theater and do a small five minute performance. Gradually, more and more people from many of the Broadway stages came to perform.

I have gone to the lottery about five to seven times. It is unbelievable how many people show up for the chance to see this show, and rightfully so. I read somewhere that the statistically if you enter the lottery around 15 times, chances are the odds will turn in your favor.

My chance came unexpectedly, when my cousin came to town, and decided that it would have been silly to get tickets to go see anything else. We sat in the very back row of the mezzanine. From an arial view, the show is magical. From any view, I'm sure.

The thing about Hamilton is that I haven't really been able to express the over all good that the show does. It's not just that it is good. There's more to it. And since I can't find the words to appropriately convey that yet, talking about it at all feels almost sacrilegious. Even this feels wrong.

Anyway. It was a good night. We got to meet the cast afterwards and Jasmine Cephas Jones told me she liked my hair. I feel like I've mentioned that one before.

I ran home and bought the album. I called my family and told them to listen to it. I went back to the lottery.

Eventually, a friend came to visit. We tried the lottery a few times, but think about the luck we would have needed to succeed. Eventually we grabbed a couple of the extra Playbills off of my shelf and headed to the Richard Rodgers theater anyway right around the time we knew the show would be letting out. Armed with unmatched enthusiasm and the knowledge that my friend would only be in town for a few more days and that she loved the show more than most of the people who had been in the audience anyway, we stood by the stage door and waited.

Jasmine Cephas Jones told me she liked my hair. Again. Jonathan Groff said that he liked my hat. Daveed Diggs agreed with him. My friend informed Daveed, the actor who plays Thomas Jefferson, of my childhood crush on his character in the show (weird, I know, but very true. We won't go into it. Except to say that he was a 6"2 redhead who invented the swivel chair and once thought he embarrassed himself in front of a girl and gave himself a migraine for two days. Anyway). He was... let's say... intrigued? Nah. Weirded out. He was weirded out.

My friend went back home. I went back to the lottery.

This weekend my parents are visiting. My mom and I decided to go to the lottery together. My dad tagged along, but he was already planning to see a friend of his perform in a venue up a few blocks. My mom had set up tickets for us to see a different show, just because of the unlikely nature of the lottery. Or any lottery, for that matter. When we arrived at the scene, the line was down the block. And then it curved around into the street. Twice.

"I still think we're gonna win," my mom smiled. I laughed. Whatever the outcome, the Ham4Ham show was always worth it.

Eventually, after we had dropped our name in the infamous Hamilton bucket, we ventured into 46th street to try and find a place to stand. NYPD roamed the streets, trying to corral the people into an area behind a few gates so that the traffic didn't have to stop. It wasn't working. There were so many people in the street that trucks stopped to yell at them (us? We tried to stay out of the way) with a few colorful choice words that don't need to be repeated here.

The first ridiculous thing that happened was that we ran into a college friend of my mother's who now works at NYU Tisch, in my studio. That in itself was a wild coincidence. The next sentence I hear is

"I just gotta say, I love Triptych."

I whipped my head around. The man talking to me was probably in his mid to late twenties. He was looking straight at me, and I was pretty sure I hadn't misheard him. All I could do was stare with my jaw on the ground. Triptych is the band I have back home with my boyfriend and my little brother, and it's been a while since we've played out. The fact that someone in another state knew us by name was... a little on the unlikely side.

"I saw you guys play at 3rd and Lindsley," he said, referencing a bar in downtown Nashville. "I think I also saw you in a show down in Dickson... A Christmas Carol?? I'm not stalking you, I swear," he laughed.

Turns out he recognized my parents on the street and then recognized me, and he had had a friend in A Christmas Carol, too. What kind of a minuscule world is that?

Our conversation was cut short when Lin Manuel-Miranda came out of the doors of the theater, followed by the entire cast of Broadway's On Your Feet. After a wonderful (if not a little challenging to hear--a product of the hundreds of people and angry drivers) performance of a song from In The Heights, the man behind the table in front of the theater started pulling names.

And--we all know where this is going-- I won.

I didn't even register the first time they called my name. Just as I had all the other times, I was merely there for the fun of it. For the electric thrill of hearing other people scream when they hear their name against all odds. The idea that the name would be mine hadn't really occurred to me. I was listening as if I were at someone else's school graduation. But there it was: my name, hanging in the air in front of the Richard Rodgers Theater.
Well, sort of.

"Kayla Wooten?" the man behind the table called.

"Huh," I thought. "That one sounds familiar."  Then my mom screamed.

"Kaila that's you!" She yelled, and I felt two hands guiding me through the crowd towards the table.

Then it hit.

I remember all of my breath falling out of my lungs like one gigantic waterfall.

"Whaaaat?!!?!" Who knows whether it was a yell or a scream. I half walked half fell towards the theater. My hands were shaking.

I stood in a line of eleven people on the steps of the theater while they checked our IDs and took the ticket money. We exchanged excited stories about how sure we had been that we weren't going to win anything today. My parents cheered me on. I was downright jittery.

A man walked down the line, handing out wristbands with the date on them and a tiny Hamilton star.

"You can take these off after intermission," he said, dryly.

"But... can I just wear mine forever?" I asked. Immediately I kicked myself. Play it cool, you dork. The man laughed.

"Yeah, it's totally up to you." (It's still on my wrist)

The front row of the Richard Rodgers theater puts you at eye level with the floor of the stage. I could touch it from my seat. Sitting down. (I did)

Here is a misconception that I had about large theaters: I formerly believed that in a gigantic theater, the lights are simply too bright for any human onstage to see the people sitting in the audience. This seems to be incorrect.

The first thing that Anthony Ramos did when he walked out onstage in the first number was look me straight in the eyes. I was not ready.

I thought I was imagining it at first, but by the third time I was convinced. Next was Lin. His nervous nineteen-year-old Hamilton kept making eye contact with the girl in the front row. Then Andrew Rannells sang at me. Then a boy in the ensemble. I turned to my mother during intermission.

"They keep looking at us. Are they looking at us, or is it just me?" I asked her.

"They're looking at you," she told me, which was just a little more than I could handle.

I want to take a moment to point out that I am not italicizing the term Hamilton for the sole reason that it feels like it is something bigger than just a musical and I'm not sure what is grammatically correct in a situation like that.

After the show we waited at the stage door.

Daveed didn't even remember the Thomas Jefferson debacle (Did you know that he loved vanilla ice cream and had mockingbirds? Actual mockingbirds.), so I guess I didn't scar him too badly. Jasmine didn't mention my hair again, but I suppose we can't have everything.

And then Anthony Ramos walked my way.

"You were the girl in the front row, right?" he asked. I know that breathing is supposedly a normal thing that we all just know how to do, but I swear in that moment I forgot how.

"Stage right?" he asked. I nodded. "I loved your energy--you were giving me life. That's dope!" (He says 'dope' a lot. It's adorable.)

I know that I said enough words to get him to take a picture with me, but I can't for the life of me remember what they were. I hope they sounded normal.

Then Lin came out.

"Hey!!!! Front row!" he grinned at me. "You were the best audience--you had the best facial reactions!"

I kid you not, Lin Manuel-Miranda then proceeded to imitate my facial reactions to his performance. He put his hands on both cheeks and tried to make his face look like mine. He said more words too, (He spoke actual words in reflection on his memories of me, because he has those now. Memories of me.) but to be honest, I'm having a hard time remembering what they were, because of the fact that my heart was racing and I was having an extremely hard time keeping a handle on my emotions.

Basically, this is another episode describing the ridiculously amazing ways in which the universe is taking care of me, as I hope it has been taking care of us all. I hope it knows that I am extremely and eternally grateful.

Your obedient servant,
K. Woot

(^ Get it? A Hamilton reference? Yeah.  I'll see myself out.)

wildly human and utterly in control

There are three things that I am focusing on learning today.
1. Learning to play guitar
2. Streamlining the way I learn music
3. Walking in heels

SO
To tie all of these things together.

I have been trying to learn guitar for about three days now. I can play a few songs (you know, the ones that only have, like, A, D, G, Em, C, in them). The F chord stands for 'freaking difficult'. You guys guitar is so hard. My fingers have these little numb spots on them that I can only feel when they hurt. It's a struggle, but it's also super super fun.

As for the walking in heels thing. It's generally accepted as a social norm that girls know how to do this, and I own exactly one pair, so I figured it was time. All of the girls had to wear them for a character assignment in class yesterday (we had to dress like a successful CEO in the 80s to explore what 'power' means--our teacher told us to be wildly human and utterly in control), so I stood in them for about an hour. I even walked up and down some seating platforms. I didn't fall once. If you can't tell, I'm quite proud.

I'm also trying to streamline my method of learning music so that I can do so faster. The general idea is that if I really force myself to get good at sight singing and memorization, I can pretty much survive in any situation I throw myself into. My seemingly less-disastrous-than-I-let-myself-believe time with that AMAZING jazz band I was telling you all about actually proved me wrong. Looks like they liked me more than I liked myself, which is probably a good lesson for all of us, so it's time to really crack down and learn learn learn. As if that's ever not true :)

The amalgamation of these three goals has led me to waddle down the hall to the elevators and then down thirteen levels to the music room to see if there are any open slots for today. (But only before 10 PM American Horror Story, because it's extremely important that I catch the new episode.)

All right. The shoes are buckled. My keys are in hand. Have a lovely day and wish me luck.