Retroscena

pretend conversations with helen parts 3 & 4

The girls are at the edge of a treacherous cliff somewhere in the Badlands. Maggie dangles off the side, as Helen tries to help her up.

Helen: Come on! You can do this!

Maggie: The adrenaline is not reaching my ab muscles!

Helen: You wore the fugly hiking shoes for a reason. Hike up the side of this cliff, or so help me - 

Maggie: You’ll drop me?

Helen: Yes, and before that I will sing “Call Me Maybe” so it gets stuck in your head for your entire afterlife. 

Maggie: You are such a jerk. 

Helen: Use your pole strength!

Maggie grunts and climbs up. 

Maggie: Dude, you have a hella sunburn.

Helen: Yeah, well, you almost died, so.

——

The girls are at the edge of a treacherous cliff on the Irish Mountain, Croagh Patrick. Helen dangles off the side, as Maggie tries to help her up.

Maggie: Breathe, girl. You can make it. 

Helen: Whose idea was this?

Maggie: It was no one’s idea for you to fall off a cliff, but let’s focus on the positive, yeah?

Helen: My boobs are in the way, I can’t climb!

Maggie: There’s freezing moss on my ass, and yes you can. I’ve got you. You are a tiny person. Climb.

Helen: When we get off this mountain, I am drinking the biggest beer ever.

Maggie: Good. You do that. I will be in the back, beating up our tour guide.

Helen grunts and climbs up.

Helen: You look like you had an accident.

Maggie: Freezing moss, dude. And maybe I peed a little, but you were gonna die, for God’s sake. 

freelancing isn’t free.

I have been piecing a living together from artistic/creative-related work for close to six years now. Freelancing can be a scary enterprise - often, you don’t know when, where or how you will obtain your rent. You write countless emails, nudge your contacts, and try to stay very flexible - a job could come in at any moment. Or not.

This lifestyle has widened my focus a lot over the years. Once, I thought I would mainly be a director and a writer. My financial needs pushed me to acquire a number of other skills - production coordinator, hair and makeup artist, costume designer, graphic designer, model…the list goes on. I’ve worked hard to bring my focus back to my true passion, and although I am experiencing some success, I still need the other gigs to keep me afloat as I build a career. 

I’ve hit a rough patch, where the work is not flowing like it used to. I’ve been trying to keep calm as my standards drop lower and lower, and I’m finding myself in increasingly degrading/pathetic interview scenarios (if I even get called for an interview).

I went to one interview recently where my potential boss was literally asleep when I arrived at his home office. His roommate let me inside (said that he was in the shower) and after waiting for 25 minutes, I determined that the snoring I heard in the other room was probably the issue. I went into his room to wake him. He didn’t wake up. I left my resume, sent a follow-up email and never heard from him again.

The most depressing thing is that interviews like that are becoming standard issue. 

Every now and then, I see someone post a rant on Craigslist about how the requests of potential “employers” are outrageous and disgusting. The longer this dry spell drags on, the more rabidly I agree with them. 

I know the economy is terrible, and people are trying to piece together projects on fumes. I’m all for “let’s make art” and create something from nothing. But when you’re posting “JOBS”…and this is not just a Craigslist problem…it’s rude to ask for what’s commonly known as a “favor.”

PAYMENT comes in the following forms:

-Money. 

-Sometimes product or ‘trade’

With modeling only, I think it’s acceptable to trade for extremely high quality or inventive photos with retouching, or product if it’s something other than t-shirts.

If I am hired as a makeup artist or in a production capacity, and someone tells me they will pay me in “copy, credit, and meals” or “great future opportunities,” it is beyond insulting. 

You mean, you want me to put 50-100 miles on my car, donate product from my kit, spend hours of my personal expertise on your performers in exchange for some pizza and soda?

TOP TEN ARTS-EMPLOYMENT LIES:

1. “Great networking opportunity!”

2. “Deferred pay”

3. “Stipend, plus lots of fun!”

4. “Exposure, credit and lunch” (exposure to WHAT?!)

5. “Great portfolio-builder!”

6. “Possible pay”

7. “Unpaid intern position, but could potentially turn into job”

8. “Nominal fee”

9. “If you do an AMAZING job, there might be room in the budget to pay you.”

10. “Lo/no pay - depends on experience”

Stop clowning around, folks. A favor is a favor, so just ask for it by name…

So those of us looking for a JOB can look elsewhere.

/end rant

The Climb #6: Helen Highfield, Actress

                          

If you’ve been around my blog before, you’ve seen our pretend conversations. I figure it’s about time I let her speak for herself.

Helen Highfield and I met at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and acted together for 2 years solid. I’m in the midst of drafting a play about the growth of our friendship, so I won’t bore you with the details here - you can just come see the play in a few months!

What you should know about Helen is:

1. She is stunning, classic-Hollywood beautiful, with the most incredible hair ever.

2. She’s criminally smart.

3. She can act your pants off, and then some.

4. She can make 200 balloon poodles in under an hour. 

5. If you need someone to talk you off the ledge of professional frustrations, Helen is your gal. 

Enough from me. Read on, for excellence.

Talk about your earliest acting experiences. How did you get started? 

When I was 9, I went to this super hippie Shakespeare Camp and played the  wisecrackinʼ maid, Maria, in Twelfth Night. I got to say “Go box your ears!”, which was  pretty fun. Then, starting in eighth grade, I did all the school musicals cause I loved to sing. After my junior year musical (The Secret Garden - I was Martha, the wisecrackinʼ Yorkshire maid), a woman who ran an acting studio in our town approached me about taking classes. I was absolutely terrified to go, but thank goodness I did. I remember coming home from the first class and babbling to my mom about how amazing it was and how this was something I was willing to be bad at for a while (a change from previous artistic endeavors… *sigh* I wish I could play the piano, or violin… or ski for that matter). Anywho, the class was a Meisner class and I did it for 2 years before deciding to skip college and go to the Neighborhood Playhouse to study acting in NYC (and meet my bestie!). 

What made you decide to make this your career? 

Once I got to the Playhouse, I think it was really just about me accepting that Iʼd basically already made the decision to be an actor. It hadnʼt really crossed my mind as a career choice till I got there. But I think the positive feedback I got and being around other career oriented actors made me go “hey! I could really do this!”. Then as I started to get cast in things here and there, got my AEA card, did a Law and Order, I feel like the universe just reaffirmed my decision. Iʼm also really lucky to have a family thatʼs been ridiculously supportive of my choice. I think that has really helped. 

You have a really systematic approach to the ʻbusiness of the business.ʼ Tell me a  little about how you stay organized and focused. 

Hm. Itʼs possible I have mild OCD? I come from a family of engineers and economics professors so organization is somewhat built into my brain and I enjoy the business of the business. Iʼm obsessed with stationary so stuff like thank you cards to industry people is fun (when Iʼm not in super procrastinator mode). I dunno, I think I find comfort in the possibility that there could be some kind of strategy to what is pretty much a mapless career path. Basically, I try to make the work fun for myself by nerding out on lists, binders, and color coding my calendar. Also post-its. Love me some post- its. The flip side is that I can easily waste several hours reading blogs about productivity… which isnʼt very, well, productive. 

After all that left brain activity, what steps do you take to stay creative? 

Once Iʼm reading the script and working on it, Iʼm in a zone and having fun. But sitting down to do it is hard. I often have to create the “perfect” environment, shutting my door, putting music on, etc. A cup of tea is usually essential. Something Iʼve been working on lately is making more of a habit of creative work. I had this facepalm realization recently that I could, in fact, do script work first thing in the morning. Sounds ridiculous, but Iʼd always needed to work at night and Iʼd get all stressed out about finding the perfect time to do it. Itʼs so nice to go through my day knowing that Iʼve already put some creative time in. 

Whatʼs the trainwreckiest audition experience youʼve had? 

I havenʼt had too many trainwrecks. So either Iʼve wiped them from my memory, or theyʼre waiting ʻround the bend for me. But letʼs see.. One of my first auditions out of school was a callback at The Public Theater for Shakespeare in the Park. It was the first time Iʼd had to do a scene with a reader and for some reason I got completely in my head about if I should look at the reader (who was to the side) or above the casting directorʼs head like a monologue. I remember calling my sister after and ranting about not knowing where to look and feeling like an idiot. The funny thing about auditioning is that you are never the best judge of how it went. Iʼve booked jobs after walking out of the room and thinking “well, that sucked” and Iʼve not gotten jobs after feeling like I NAILED it. A teacher once told me that the best thing you can do is raise your lowbar. Work on your acting and auditioning skills so that even on your crappiest days, your ”worst” performance is still damn good. 

What was the most killer acting high you had in 2011? 

Probably doing Criminal Minds. I got the job through a workshop with the Casting Director during a “letʼs see what LA is all about” trip. While I was on set, all I could think was, this is where I want to be every day. Itʼs the best. Also, I canʼt speak more highly of my experiences in my classes at Lesly Kahn & Co. Iʼve definitely had some acting highs in class. I can start to sound like a moony but truly, I feel like my acting process has changed so much for the better and Iʼm consistently inspired to work harder and improve as an artist because Iʼm in class. 

Whatʼs the best advice youʼve ever received? 

Forgive yourself and move on. When our acting teacher, Richard Pinter, said that, it was like heʼd just smacked me in the face. I hold myself to high standards and Iʼm real good at shame spiraling so the idea of instant forgiveness blew my mind. For acting in a scene, itʼs all about getting back in the moment if youʼve made a mistake or gotten in your head. For the business of the biz, those words help me remember that there is no one way to do things and itʼs ok that Iʼm gonna make some mistakes. 

pretend conversations with helen part 2

On the freeway today (on my way to have lunch with the real Helen).

Helen: Maggie, you’re on the 10, where people drive fast. No offense, but please hit the gas.

Maggie: I’m distracted by this giant piece of glitter that’s trapped in my eye.

Helen: Been there. 

Maggie: Why are we listening to this Kanye song?

Helen: Because there’s a Selena Gomez song on the other station.

Maggie: Do you think we’re allowed to call Kanye “Yeezy”? Or are we too old and white for that?

Helen: I don’t know. We should try it.

Maggie & Helen: Yeezy. 

Helen: Nope. No bueno.

Maggie: Yeah. If I were not me, and I heard us say that, I would think we were total asshats.

pretend conversations with helen part 1

Sometimes, if I’ve been conversing frequently with my best friend and roommate Helen, I continue the conversation when she’s gone. Helen and I have had many pretend conversations this way. You may call it schizophrenia, but I call it inventive socialization.

Pretend Conversation 1: Sunday Morning

Maggie: Helen, there isn’t enough coffee in the world to make me get out of this bed. It is warm and soft and I don’t care if my butt muscles are going to atrophy. I will stay here forever. 

Helen: Come on. You know you should get up. It’s a beautiful day.

Maggie: Helen, we live in LA. There are enough people out there appreciating the day. They started appreciating it on their dawn hike, and now they’re appreciating a 16 dollar glass of kale juice.

Helen: True. (she smiles) But we could split a kale juice.

Maggie: Or a coffee. Let’s go get coffee, Helen!

And then I remember that she is at work and I am still in bed.

makin it official

I want to shout it from the rooftops: I have a writing partner!

Her name is Carmen Angelica, and she is hella funny. 

Together, we’ve been working on a webseries (made especially for one Miss Helen Highfield) called Liberty in the Halls. It’s a comedy, very much in the Parks n Rec style. We’ve also been developing full TV pitches, music video treatments, and sketches for our troupe Guilty Party - some of which will be available online very very soon.

Our 301 class at the Upright Citizens Brigade will be showcasing soon (April 4th!), and Carmen has written some killer sketches that you MUST see. I wrote one too. ;)

Pictured above is a sneak peek of something Carmen & I (and the other awesome members of the Guilty Party team) have been putting together. It’s a parody piece I wrote back in my UCB 101 days (in the wayback ancient times of last November), featuring a favorite childhood cartoon…

The Climb #5: Danielle Bensky, Dancer

              

Danielle Hannah Bensky. She is a living pixie. Boundless energy. Incredible work ethic. This creature will dance and work and rehearse and dance and work and rehearse until she collapses, then get up three hours later and do it all again.

We met at my alma mater, The Neighborhood Playhouse, and began working together on just about everything. Costumes, show concepts, choreography - whatever it was that week, we did it together. We carried our antics out west to California, overseas to Israel, and through just about every coffee shop and costume house in New York and the boroughs. And it was a blast, because there is no way to NOT have fun with Danielle. 

It makes my heart hurt to think about how much I miss this girl. Since life carried me to Los Angeles and her to a BOAT, we haven’t been in particularly great touch. But we are like family, and I think about her all the time. I am so excited for this journey she’s been on with Disney - but selfishly, I can’t wait for her contract to be done so we can spend a week over-caffeinated, giggling and gluing crystals & feathers to everything.

1. How did you get started dancing?

I started dancing when I was 5. My mom had me in gymnastics until I came home one day and told her there wasn’t enough music! She put me into ballet classes the next day. She always thought that I loved to dance because I was born deaf and after a couple of successful operations of putting tubes in, to open my ear canal, I finally could hear sound…and of course dance is just the physicality of what music is already saying. I’m pretty sure that music has always been the source of inspiration in my life.

2. What made you decide to make this your career? 

I never really thought about any other career. All my life, I have only ever performed or worked in costume/stage production. It’s just always been the love of my life, It seemed natural to keep working with my love.

3. You’re on a very intense, year long contract with Disney. Tell me a little about this new adventure, and what’s been happening so far.

It’s all Disney, all the time. You really eat, sleep, and breathe it. At first it seemed like we were going to have all of this excess time for the rehearsal process, and now we’re mounting two main stage shows in ten days - while maintaining the work we’ve already done on other productions AND learning new choreography for the deck shows. It’s exciting, terrifying, frustrating, draining…the whole spectrum, every day.

The biggest highlights for me so far have been performing for the top executives of the company (including CEO Bob Iger) and starting a whole new show with choreographer Spencer Liff (SYTYCD). Also, becoming really great friends with Mickey and Minnie hasn’t been so bad either. Minnie makes a pretty great pirate and really works her tail off in Mickey’s Pirates of the Carribean.

Looking forward, I’m most excited to finally get the shows on their feet and incorporate all of the special effects in a brand new state-of-the-art theater. We’re currently rehearsing in Toronto until late January, then off to Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Germany. We’ll do tech runs on the trans-atlantic crossing (nothing like trying to dance with pyro going off, while the ship is dealing with 38 foot swells!) with a pit stop in Portugal. We end the first leg of our journey in New York, then off to the Carribean, Mexico, Saint Marteen etc.

It’s definitely an experience.

4. When you’re home, you audition your face off, nonstop. What keeps you motivated to keep going through that on a daily basis? 

If I only knew!

If I HAD to put it into words though, I’d call it “hungry passion.” It’s waking up before the city is alive and knowing that today you’ll get to be someone or something new. Everyday is an adventure in auditionland, and you never have the same day twice. It’s also the hope that if you go to that next call you might actually be what they’re looking for. It’s sort of like being addicted to gambling but you win a lot less.

My godmother, Ellie Stone (Jacques Brel) once told my Mom (who told me): “The audition that you don’t show up at is the one you could’ve booked.” So I guess it was just ingrained in me to get my butt to everything. 

5. What’s the lamest audition experience you’ve had?

HA! There have been a few, but I’m going to try not to get myself into trouble here.

This one has happened to me a couple of times: the choreographer will have some killer dance combo where they narrow us down. We dance again, another cut. Then we sing, another cut. Then finally you make it to one of the last callbacks and they’re like “OK, make a cat sound for us.” And you do.

And then they say “thank you,” and you never hear from them again.

Those are the days that you just wanna be like Really dude!? After all of that? What, did I not have enough hiss in there?!! 

The lamest had to have been: “OK, show us your best monkey impression.” So what were those 18 years of ballet for? Dance monkey dance. 

6. Tell us about a creative highlight of the past year.

 I have 2, Finally getting to create my first 4 minute theatrical contemporary piece with an amazing team and getting it filmed. I got to play with lighting, costumes,etc - it felt great to be the one in control. The other is a writing project of adapting a movie into a musical. It’s taking me longer than anticipated but it’s incredibly exciting to envision your favorite movie come to life.

7. With unlimited time and funding, what would you create?

Oh man, don’t even tempt me! I think the answer to this may change as I grow as an artist but for my current project, I’m a huge fan of aerial work, lomography cameras, live music (preferably late 60s/early 70s) and multimedia, so I would love to fuse all of those components to create a full length musical. I would want to use the entire theater with aisles that raise and lower as platforms with the performers playing out in the house as well, so that you’d feel as though you were really involved in the show. There would be lots of lighting elements, including dancers with lights coming out of their hands and feet. The choreography would serve as part of the story while seeing that the stage is illuminated at the proper crescendo’s. It would also be incredibly physical and be partnering heavy but the general style would be more fluid than what we usually picture on Broadway. Oh yea and it would be at the Al Hirschfield theater (a girl can dream right?!)

8. What’s the best advice you’ve received?