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...)