My First Solo Show in Chi-town

This post wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of my amazing team. THANK YOU Unheard Of Company. Thank you Kayla, Jacob, and Jenn. Thanks for being there for me when I truly just literally couldn’t even. When I was ready to throw those gd cue cards into Lake Michigan. When I insisted more lines get cut so I wasn’t on stage for too long. I. Well. Thank you.

My first solo show titled “A Hungover Confessional” was first, FIRST developed at Juniata College. I was in a comedy writing intensive led by power house Lauren Weedman. She asked us to tell a story. A story we loved to tell or we think could become something bigger or just any old story. I really couldn’t think of anything. I’m not good on the spot like that. I HATE thinking about what my favorite movie is. While I watched the other students tell their delightful tales, I racked my brain searching for SOMETHING, anything. Suddenly, a story crossed my mind. Not a story I enjoy telling. Quite the opposite actually. A story of the worst thing I had done up until that point in my life. (Not ready to really dive into if this was the worst thing I’ve ever done…we’ll talk after I get back into therapy.) I figured it had been a few years and I was healed enough to tell it. I knew I risked everyone in the class hating me forever. Or throwing eggs at me. Nevertheless, she did it. Or whatever that quote is. I told Lauren. I told everyone in the class. No one got up and left or threw eggs at me or asked me to never talk to them ever again. That was the first time I thought I could make something out of this story. Lauren also asked us to play our favorite song and the song I played for everyone that day ended up in the Chicago debut which is just a sweet little anecdote.

This was taken before one of Lauren’s classes. It was college. During the day, we drank on a lake. During the evening, we had story telling class.

The first official draft of this show was written at a class at the Chicago Dramatists. The lovely Arlene Malinowski, my teacher and kinda hero in life, encouraged me to work on this piece until I felt it was ready to be read out loud. Having written and performed solo shows on her own, I really valued her opinion of my work. I came in with a general idea of what I wanted the show to look like and leapt from there. Also, when I first it emailed it to her, when it was like 7 pages long and riddled with spelling errors she responded “Gasp! And delight and such big congratulations. I am so proud of you”. I mean. How can you get any lovelier? I truly owe it to Arlene and my fellow classmates for inspiring me to pursue this dream. After working on it in class, I kept writing and working on it until September 2018.

Asides from turning 24, September 2018 was super important for me because that is when I met Kayla, Jenn, and Jacob aka Unheard Of Company. I had auditioned for their first show, “ILY” an original work by Jenn, and successfully made it into cast. I met some of my closest friends in Chicago as well as learned a lot about myself during that show process. I poured my heart out into a blog post about being 24 and how scared shitless I was to be an adult but brought up the fact that I had a solo show ready to be put on so how unprepared could I really be? Not even a day later I got a Facebook message from Jenn that Unheard Of is interested in putting it up. Blessed really could never cover it.

We had some production meetings. Went over schedule thangs. Rough ideas of where to put on the dang show. I sent in a final draft. And viola. My solo show was well on it’s way. In February of 2019, Unheard Of Company and I sat down and like made a concrete rehearsal schedule. Rehearsals would begin at the end of March for an April 29th opening. Opening. Can you even believe? I couldn’t. I struggled hard throughout the rehearsal process to grasp with the idea that humans would be paying money to hear me talk for 40+ minutes. You do all the mediations, breath exercises, and readings. You blast Lizzo everyday. But suddenly, when you think your self worth is boxed into a show you wrote and you would perform alone, you have no idea where to go. Every artist will tell you different things. Every person is different and everyone’s coping mechanisms are different. I did what I knew would be best, just do the damn thing. I voiced my fears to my team who would, of course, shower me with love and support. I pushed through each rehearsal telling myself that negative thoughts will arise but be gentle with them. Don’t let them become your only thoughts. Before I knew it, I looked into a crowd of best friends, my partner, my sister, and the greatest critic of all time, my mother, and took a bow. This process was short but telling. People asked me how it was going everywhere I went. I wasn’t sure how to respond. What can you say when everything you’ve worked for, every late night studying lines until the library closed, every awful audition, every note I was given to be louder and bolder, every show, every rehearsal, every tear shed for this fucking career we call performing, every draft re-written, every piece of myself I gave to this dream of mine only to have this dream of mine came true? To that, I say, yeah the show went well.

Kayla, director extraordinaire, also took the production photos for A Hungover Confessional.