Dinosaur Bukkake & Other Reasons To Love Life

 Ciao fuckers!!!!!!!

I know I know I know I know I know EYE NO! I have been gone far too long from you my little possum. If I could club a baby seal to prove to you, how much I've missed you--I would. I would even toss a baby squirrel to a Dingo. [Okay so those of you new to this blog just might think that I'm some fucked up sociopath. Well, I'm ain't. Though my thoughts can be moldy and pestilent...I love all people, places and things. Now that we've got that settled, back to my artless, rude maggot filled posting].


My life has been filled with DRAMA. Yes, chile drama. As in on the stage.  Mummy has been picking cotton everyday for the past few weeks working on a new American play called Immediate Family written by my homedawg Paul Oakley Stovall. We had a short and intense rehearsal process, and when you're working on new work (a script that has never been produced and constantly changes) it can consume most of your thoughts, time and energy.  I can't tell you how many draft blog entries I have back logged from May 9th...I wanted to be dilligent about my experience during this process, but it just didn't happen.  Now that I have a wee bit more time on my hands, I'll try to roll back the hands of time and blog about what happened in the rehearsal room and what it was like working with our directress: Mzzzzz Phylicia Rashad.

But before we get to how I came to know and love mother Huxtable, lets get to know the little Black girl from the South Side who wanted to make people cry, laugh and forget their worries.


This production marks my return to the stage, so naturally I'm over joyed at this life altering experience. Some of you might think "life altering" might sound a wee bit dramatic, but I think we've already established that I am dramatical. I've always been gregarious and would even host salons in my living room. As a child, the large mirror in our living room served as my audience, the berber carpet my stage. My costume? My Mami's silk scarves, her jewels and moo moo robes. I was like a junior Mrs. Roeper dipped in chocolate---Fuck it, we're family. I've no secrets about what a strange child I was: I would autograph my Garbage Pail Kid cards. Yeah, I wanted to be prepared for my adoring "fans" as I exited the stage door.  I didn't want to hang about signing autographs because my billionaire boyfriend Reggie Williams.

Who is Reggie Williams? He's the Black best friend on Small Wonder.

Reggie Williams. My Childhood blactor heart throb.

Are you done laughing? Well screw you ass-munch! I thought the boy was a rich fucker and I wanted in. I wanted to to wear diamonds and turbans and he would wear an ascot and smoking jacket. And we would be a power couple in Hollywood and in the world of theatre. Stop. Fucking. Laughing! I would select and cut out dresses from the Speigel catalogs to impress him. Thennn I would beg my mother to take me into Wiebolts and Chas. A. Stevens on State Street, because I wanted a pair of opera gloves. Honey I wanted to be like them girls in Ebony Fashion Fair. I would beg her for shit, I had no business wearing--but I wanted to look like an actress! She would just give me a side eye and quip "If it ain't at Goldblatts on 47th street, it ain't happening little girl." I've always had champagne taste, with Kool Aid money. Oh I was all too certain this was child abuse from my mother...denying me shoulder pads, dangling earrings, and fur jackets. Instead I had to wear Mary Janes, stupid hair ribbons, and moon boots.



My flair for all things actress was only made worse when I was accepted into the prestigious drama program at Curie Metropolitan HS for the Creative & Performing Arts.

I attended Curie in  29 B.C. and man let me tell you, high school was a fucking blast. Whereas most high school students learn to climb ropes in gym class, shorthand or how to operate Easy Bake ovens in Home Economics, I was a learning Greek classics and the poetry of Langston Hughes. I couldn't be bothered with learning how to type, how to solve algebraic mysteries or Spanish I classes. No, I was too busy learning soliloquies, how to correct my sickled foot in ballet, and ultimately how to be a weirdo.   

My day begin at 7 am with classical vocal training. Classes, lunch, rehearsal for plays and dance classes at Joseph Holmes. I'd crawl home at about 7pm do homework and fall asleep. During my sophomore year my drama teacher Lilian Monkus (rest her soul) selected me to join her Goodman Scholar program. It was a program for her serious drama majors...we got to skip a few hours of school and travel downtown to the Goodman Theatre to see how plays got made. The first production I saw at the Goodman was August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. At 15 years old, I fell in love hard with theatre.  And I vowed one day to work at that theatre.


Well it's taken a few years, but I finally made it onto a Goodman stage. And as promised, I will flip back a few calender days and walk you through how it came to be.


For now, just know that I'm having a fucking blast. I am happier than I have been in many many moons. Despite being annoyingly sober & having to learn how to deal with lucid thoughts, battling laryngitis and having a sprained armioclavular joint...I'm doing well. Oh yeah, theatre is not for sissy's. It requires discipline, focus, and an open spirit.



Anyhow, I've got to go and get some calisthenics in before tonight's show. Listen, if you're in Chicago, drop by the Goodman theatre and come see our play.  And if you're not in Chicago, buy someone else in Chicago a ticket to see our play.  You don't want to miss an opportunity to see some great writing, a stellar ensemble cast, and of course you don't want to miss your rollicking wet nurse spray the crowd with sour milk. So curl your pubic hairs, slap on some Jean Nate, run to the department store, shoplift some opera gloves and get thee to the theeeeayter.


Ciao for now fuckers,

x

Wiebolts Dept Store Chicago

Chas A Stevens Dept. Store Chicago

Immediate Family
written by Paul Oakley Stovall directed by Phylicia Rashad
Now thru August 5 at the Goodman Theatre 170 N. Dearborn Street
http://goodmantheatre.org/immediatefamily
http://immediatefamilyplay.org