Next Steps...

So, I'm thinking about what my next step is...considering I'll be in L.A. to work soon. The original plan was to continue doing "Local Couple Wins Lottery", the web series I did as a SAG signatory, that made me eligible to join the Screen Actor's Guild. Well, that looks like it's not going to happen any time soon as I'm the only one of the series actually moving to L.A. right now. I thought about continuing my Improv studies at Second City Hollywood...or The Groundlings (where Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig took Improv) or even I.O. (Improv Olympics, where Tina Fey also went, though the Chicago one...). So I've been pretty confused on what to do.

A talent manager who I'd been in contact with and met with in L.A. had some great advice to me...she wanted me to take some more acting classes once I got there, and actually be more prepared for when she can take me on as a full-on client. Out there, it's harder to get an adult in front of the right people, i.e. casting directors, talent agents, without the right stuff on your resume. Truthfully, I haven't had a bunch of acting training. I took Acting 1 when I went to Columbia College in Chicago, and then I took Acting 1 & 2 at Second City and Improv 1 there also. That's not a bunch of training, truthfully, if I'm looking to get on a sitcom, which is my goal right now. So I told the manager that I would study with a great teacher there, really understand the craft of acting, and then go out and audition for EVERYTHING...so I'll have a pretty pumped up resume by pilot season next year. But at the same time, I really love being behind the camera...and I really want to enter the writing program at Second City. Writing is essentially what makes me the happiest, the one thing that I feel the most confident in, about the acting and the singing.

So, while I'm working on other people's projects as an actor, I'm going to be working on mine. I have two projects coming up with my best friend Jontynise Smith. The first, is a comedic web series I wrote for her to star in, and I play her sister. She plays Abby, a comedy writer who's newly divorced and already questioning if she should enter a relationship with the guy she likes down the hall. It's called "With Haste", and it's bound to angry up certain people I know (clears throat) because I play a lesbian stand-up comedian. Yep. Anyway, I'm directed it and producing it also. And maybe I'll get a signatory contract for it also. On top of that, Jontynise and I are discussing doing a pilot for a show we wrote when we were pregnant with our daughters 5 years ago called "Me, You and Josh" about two best friends/roommates who are in love with the same guy. It's a comedy and it's ridiculous. I might actually start asking for donations to complete these projects, because God knows I need a Mac to edit these bad boys. It was a pain in the ass trying to edit on this POS Dell laptop...it gave me such headaches editing "Local Couple Wins Lottery".

Nevertheless, catch up on it...here's episodes 1-4 of "Local Couple Wins Lottery"!