December 19, 2007
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Today I find myself in week two at the Oakwood Apartments, halfway house for aspiring actors, writers, directors, slackers, and any other person looking to live in Hollywood on the cheap. The room is small, but the bed is a Murphy (the underside of which is a giant mirror) so some illusion of space is maintained.
More importantly, I'll be leaving on Sunday, departing LAX on a redeye, getting into Chicago at 5 AM. I wish you could still smoke on planes.
My time here hasn't been bad. One of the roadies on High School Musical needed time off, so she called me in to replace her for her stay in Hawaii. She had already trained me to call the show, and it didn't take long to get back into the swing of things. The first show was almost a disaster. After that, the jitters wore off and I was back to where I was when the show left Chicago. My two spot ops are a mixed bag of neuroses, but nice enough. And they do what they're told, so I really can't complain.
Through it all, I only occasionally ask myself, "Is this what I left school for?"
I try not to think about it too hard. Dropping out is certainly not the traditional way to enter into the next stage of one's life, especially when one was as close to graduation as I, but it felt like the right thing to do, as stupid as that might sound. And now I'm thinking about it. Too hard.
While I was doing laundry the other day, I got to talking with the lady using the machine next to mine. She had moved to the Oakwood six months previously to give her thirteen year old son a better shot at getting into acting. He's currently enrolled at the acting school which is a part of the mall where I currently work (The Kodak is the only theatre I've ever worked that was part of a mall. Only in LA). When she asked me why I was there, I told her, and the ubiquitous questions followed. But she seemed nice enough, and didn't have that creepy air about her that I've seen in so many other stage moms. Yes. I think it was because she actually wanted her young son to succeed on the grounds that he loves theatre. How rare is that?
No matter how plastic you might think this place is (and it is, incredibly so), it's nice to know that there are good people here, too.
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