Melissa Dunphy

Right before I woke this morning, I dreamed I went to a doctor complaining of feeling tired all the time (I do. IRL, I mean. It's disconcerting. I've slept 8-9 hours every night this week.). The doctor listened to my symptoms, nodded sagely, and gave me his verdict: "You have meningitis."

This seemed a perfectly acceptable diagnosis. "Oh no! What do I do?"
"There's a treatment I can give you, but in order to qualify for it, we must find the worm on your body that gave you meningitis."

This was also reasonable. There was a hitch, however. "I haven't seen a worm on my body."

The doctor gave me a knowing look.

"Oh! I mean, sure! There was a worm on my body, sure!"

Just to make the lie more believable, the doctor took a scalpel and made a small cut on my face. "There," he said. "That will be where we took the worm out."

He handed me some kind of prescription, and I walked out of his office. I had nearly reached the street when I felt a sudden wriggling in my shoe. Upon removing the shoe, of course, I found a fat, maggoty worm coming out of my foot. The worm fell to the floor, then morphed according to weird four-dimensional dreamland physics into a black two-headed cat. That is, a cat with a second head where its tail should be. The bidirectional Janus cat ran through a nearby restaurant and dove into a hole in the wall, astonishing the dining guests.

Thus ended the crazy dream. What the hell is that all about?

On another subject, for those who don't follow my Twitter account religiously or converse with me physically, I have proven that if you talk about wanting to do something enough, it will probably come true. I've been accepted into the University of Pennsylvania's Ph.D. program in composition on a Benjamin Franklin fellowship. Come fall, it's Ivy League for free! For better than free, actually; I get a lovely stipend on top of having the tuition and medical comped. And I get to skip my master's degree, which is a nice saving of time and money too.

This means that I will have to give up acting for at least four years. Good thing I'm going out with a bang. Right now I'm playing Lady Macbeth for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre's touring version of Macbeth, and I'm in rehearsals for Hamlet at the Lantern Theater, in which I'm playing Ophelia. There will be days later this season when I play Lady M in the morning and Ophelia in the evening. They both end up the same way; if something goes wrong in any of my performances, all I have to remember is to lose my mind and stumble off-stage to die.

I suppose it's possible that all this craziness has something to do with the crazy dreams.

Labels: acting, college, dreams

Starting this September, I'll be teaching drama classes and private lessons at Village Productions in Pottstown (I know, I've already talked to them about possibly working on the website). The company have found themselves a permanent facility for the first time -- an old furniture warehouse is being transformed into the Tri-County Performing Arts Center, or TriPAC. I visited the site for the first time today, and I'm tremendously excited about it because (a) I'm renovation-nuts and (b) watching a theatre take shape like this is kind of cool.

Here's the main stage, which will be a black box. That's an orchestra loft above the stage, although the set-up will be very flexible so that the stage and audience risers can be configured any which way within the space.



On the second level are offices and three large classrooms, which can be combined by folding away acoustic wall panels to form a second performance area, shown here. (N.B. exposed brick wall at the right is being preserved as-is, aha!) I'll be teaching four classes a week in this space.



This is the fourth wall from the last shot, because metal studs and foil-backed insulation bales look sweet.



In the basement is a fairly extensive backstage area (green room, dressing rooms with sinks, two showers!) and costume/scenic workshops, as well as a couple of private studios where I'll be giving one-on-one coaching. This is a shot from the scenic workshop through exposed studs into the green room. You can see plumbing hookups for the green room kitchenette on the lower left, and on the right is the entrance to one of the dressing rooms.



So, yay. Everyone enroll your kids and your neighbors' kids in classes here, please.

• The downside to having to visit the TriPAC today is that I missed seeing John Waters' live show in DE :(

Labels: acting, jobs, photos

I received notification in the mail today that Barry the tick was found to be negative for Lyme disease bacteria! Still, screw him for biting me. Death to all ticks.

I have some nice news on the job front, too: seems I will be playing Ophelia in Philly next year. Stay tuned for more on that. I am incredibly excited but also a little pensive because the last time I played Ophelia, one of my dads died.

If you visit this blog regularly and possess the ability to read, you are aware that I have been experiencing some personal turbulence these past few months. Hopefully that is clearing up. There's a lot of hope going on. It's intense, but also kind of beautiful.

Labels: acting

Cheesy sketches a la 1995/1996. Call it getting back to my roots, or something. Don't worry, my tongue is jammed with great gusto into my cheek.







Speaking of heart-rending (and at all not of really terrible art), wowwwwwww, everyone should come to see this play I'm reading. Especially anyone in the least bit familiar with my current situation, which is about seven people in the world, most of whom won't attend, but nevertheless. Not only is it a great play, in the tradition of great plays that leave you devastated and unable to speak afterward, but it speaks to my life and my family's life, past and present, in a frightening way. Sections of the revised script were actually uttered by me, in real life, about a week and a half ago. I almost want to start wearing a tinfoil hat to rehearsal in case the playwright is reading my mind. It's kind of like when a good friend of mine was in Spring Awakening. Although, on second thought, maybe nothing could be that intense. But it's bad. In a good way. It's like therapy every day. For pay!

Labels: acting, art

Life is more complicated than anyone can ever imagine. Enough said about that.

In not-really-life related news: I am excited to be starting work at PlayPenn tomorrow -- I have two weeks of rehearsal for a staged reading of a new play, Another Man's Son. I will be playing Lucine, who is an Armenian, and I will probably have to whip out an American accent. Yes, that's American, not Armenian, which is a relief, but I still think it looks funny written out.

I've been teaching week-long theatre camps, and while they are ludicrously satisfying (personally, not financially), they are also incredibly exhausting. Last week I had to look after twenty campers, nineteen of whom were between the ages of 5 and 8, from nine till four every day without a break -- I sit with them and keep them entertained through lunch as well. There were tears every single day from at least one of the campers, and quite often there were tears from me as soon as I stepped through my front door again. But they did put on a lovely show at the end of it, and even though I feel like I spent half my time disciplining them, they were super-affectionate. The week before, I taught Hamlet to a class of five kids aged seven through eleven, culminating in a performance of the final fight. Srsly. (Most bizarre part: the seven-year-old understood the play better than anyone.) I have two more camps to teach; the last is a musical theatre camp for which I am a little nervous because I don't really have a clue.

The next two weeks are going to be tough for reasons I'm (again) not going to go into. Uh, into which I'm not going to go. Uh. I don't really want to go into the reasons. Suffice to say that I'm going to try focusing on reading, writing, and ... cello-ing in my spare time, which is somehow simultaneously too scarce and not scarce enough. Wish me luck.

Labels: acting, jobs, love

I've been in the US a while now, and the incidence of accent foibles has decreased over time, but every now and then I still have a good one.

Yesterday I auditioned for a Shakespeare show at a theater where I've never worked. I was late, as usual, but they were running behind anyway, so there wasn't much chitchat before I began. I ran through the first side and stopped for comment. The director and his assistant both gave me a funny look.

"Um ... you ... You've obviously done a lot of vocal work. But you're using RP."

I stared at them blankly wondering if RP was some crazy American vocal technique.

"Received Pronunciation. Can you do it in your normal accent?"

My god. My god! They thought I was one of those annoying wanker Americans who pretend they're British when they do Shakespeare. I hate those actors; I couldn't believe they assumed I was one of them! I wanted to run out of the room screaming and take a shower.

"I'm Australian." I said it slowly in an effort to hide my creeping outrage.

Blank stare again, this time from both of them.

"This IS my normal accent."

"You're Australian?"

"Yes, but I don't sound like Steve Irwin. I sound more like Cate Blanchett." I couldn't believe I was having this conversation.

"Oh, uh, well, can you just sound less ... polished? Just be yourself."

So I faked having a lazy Australian accent for Shakespeare. I should have just done it in an American accent. Or, as Sean suggested when he heard the story, I should have gone balls to the wall and done the entire thing sounding exactly like Paul Hogan.

Note to self: always, always find a way to slip my Australian heritage into pre-audition chitchat, no matter how short or clumsy. "It's hot today, isn't it? Oh, but not so hot as it is back home in the outback with kangaroos and shrimp on the barbie. I said as much to my mate Judy Davis when I phoned home to the Land Down Under last weekend." Something like that.

Labels: acting

I have been running on four to six hours sleep a night for weeks. Then, on Thursday, I decided to go wild and allow myself twelve whole hours of shut-eye. On Friday, I slept for an additional eight hours.

On Saturday, I got sick.

I should have known better. You know how your immune system somehow knows when you go on a relaxing vacation and lets all the floating viruses and bacteria take hold? "Oh, pressure's off, I see, right you are -- time to collect some new antibodies." I always seemed to be sick for the first two weeks of every holiday as a kid. I guess my immune system, misunderstanding my indulgence, thought I didn't have anything better to do with my time than fight off an infection or two.

This only confirms my theory that sleep is stupid.

On Saturday, I started feeling a sore throat and a fever. On Saturday night, I went to see LunchLady Doris (great stuff!), and then discovered I was dizzy. I napped before driving home and crashing into bed. In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom, but the dizziness got the better of me, and I fell down the stairs.

And broke my little toe.

I tried very hard to go without analgesics all weekend, hoping the fever would kill off the infection faster, but this morning I couldn't stand it any more and dragged myself to a doctor. My temperature was at 101.7degF (38.7degC). OK, give me drugs and weepy self-pity, I'm obviously not going to kill this thing on my own.

The gratifying news is that the taping job I did on my toe is all anyone ever does for broken little toes anyway, so the doc advised I just leave it at that and not bother with x-rays. I guess that means I don't really know for sure if the bone is broken. I mean, it hurts like hell, and there's a massive bruise, but it's not really displaced, and the swelling could be worse; at worst, it's fractured. I've never broken a bone before. Does this count? It could just be a bad sprain.

The bad news is that I'm going to be limping about for weeks. I have several promo gigs coming up, all of which require me to be on my feet for hours at a stretch, and I have an audition on Friday for the kind of character you don't really envision as a cripple.

The good news from weeks ago is that I will be performing in Another Man's Son at PlayPenn, a new play development conference at InterAct Theatre this July. My first non-Shakespeare in four and a half years. Can it speak on stage without pentameter or archaic pronouns? Time will tell.

Labels: acting

Yesterday, I worked as Miss Chiquita Banana at the opening of a Harris Teeter store in southern Delaware. Afterwards, I took a detour east and caught my first look at the Atlantic Ocean from the shore. It's hard to believe, but in the years I've been in the States, I haven't had the chance to see an East Coast beach until now. And what better to do at a deserted windy beach than take a few narcissistic melancholy self-portraits:



And for those of you who want a damn good laugh, here. I have a new-found respect for Carmen Miranda; my hat was filled with fake foam fruit, but it was still incredibly heavy -- and I wasn't even dancing. Carmen must have had a neck of steel.



One more review of the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival season appeared in the Broad Street Review with some nice comments about me and my headshot right at the top.

I installed a new stereo in my car. I screwed something up and blew a fuse, and in the process of replacing the fuse, I did exactly the same thing as this guy. Thank god for the internet -- until I found that thread, I was driving around town setting off my car alarm every time I accidentally tried to turn on my dome light.

Labels: acting, jobs, photos, travel

The 2004 Hyundai Accent apparently hasn't hit the salvage market yet, which is certainly a good sign for the 2004 Hyundai Accent, but a terrible blow to my poor smashed car. Replacement parts for the hood, lights, and radiator are so expensive to source new that my car has been declared totaled. I tried not to take the news too hard, but I'm depressed -- mostly, I think, because I find the entire episode incredibly embarrassing.

Yesterday I went to the body shop to clear all the possessions out of my car. I had forgotten how much I live out of my vehicle; there were three garbage bags of crap to carry away, including street maps for eight Pennsylvania counties and Washington DC, various stuffed toys (Baby Cthulhu!) and bulky bedding materials, so I had to take a taxi back to the theater. Unfortunately, the cab I hailed wouldn't accept a credit card (I'm pretty sure that's illegal, but meh) and I only had six bucks in my pocket, which wasn't enough to cover the journey. However, the driver started ranting to me about the Second Coming (we only have three years left, who knew?), and in a wily move that would make my mother proud, I humored him so lavishly that he knocked about four bucks off my fare and took me the whole way. Oh, you should have heard me. I ought to become an evangelist.

Today I'm going to a dealership called "Deals on Wheels" (seriously) in Levittown, where resides a car of the exact same make, model, and year as my dead car, but in black. The asking price is almost exactly what my insurance company is paying out, but there are 7,000 miles less on the odometer. I'm going to try to talk the price down some because the previous owner installed one of those stupid coffee-can-sized tailpipes. What the hell is the point of those things? [EDIT] That car was waaay too riced out, BUT the dealer had this car on the lot, and I'm buying it!! $4500 for an Elantra GT is pretty awesome, I think. It's bigger, but gets better gas mileage, and it has a SUNROOF! It's also a manual, but I can deal with that.

Gay City News says nice things about Pericles.

• Daily caffeine protects the brain


• globeandmail.com: New organ work by Bach unearthed, say scholars

Labels: acting, travel

Today (yesterday), I crashed my car.

This week is up there. Really up there.

I'm fine. The car is going to need some work.

I want to fall down a hole and never climb out.

I can do nothing but cry and cry, and wish and wish. Wishes are agnostic prayers, I suppose.



The rift between the levels of success in my personal and professional lives continues to broaden: the Broad Street Review loved Pericles, and said some lovely things about me.

Labels: acting, psychobabble, travel

Personally it's raining, professionally the sun is out and the birds are singing.

Yesterday I discovered that I won the Gangemi composition scholarship at West Chester, which is lovely. I did a happy dance in the dressing room.

That afternoon, I received a call from Mike Lemon casting in Philly, asking if I'd do a voiceover gig on Friday. I have an appointment to get on their books next week, so it's kind of awesome that I'm being offered jobs before then.

I just cried on stage in Juliet's "Romeo is banished" scene for the first time -- usually I reserve the tears for the second act, which will probably suffer as a result, but yay for the "banished" scene.

Labels: acting, college

A review (of Pericles) (a nice one).

A poem (of Yeats) (an excerpt).

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

• Life Before Death - This sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living.


• Ministry is touring for the last time ever. I hope to be at the Philly show on April 29.


• What's up with me and poetry today? T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'.

Labels: acting, psychobabble

Bard's tale of young love is oddly distant | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/18/2008

Labels: acting

I am sick for the second time in two weeks - I blame theater and kissing. This combination was also responsible for my mono/Epstein Barr infection in 1999, so I have some history with it.

I am so behind in school work, I feel in serious danger of exploding my 4.0 this semester, which is why I am up at two in the morning trying desperately to shift the phlegm-coated and solidly rusted gearstick in my head from "acting" to "composing." Yes, I knew this would happen. But I hoped it wouldn't.

So far, I have opened Cubase, Sibelius, and Word. I am unsure whether this all-in approach will galvanize me into action, or merely dissipate my focus. Perhaps I should instead try to open only one program at a time. I will probably spend at least another fifteen minutes pondering this decision.

I should probably eat something. Maybe go to the toilet again. Oh, I just thought of an e-mail I could send. I would save time if I did all three at once, but that would not be hygienic.

Labels: acting, college

Following the Romeo & Juliet preview on Wednesday night, Mike, one of the actors at Philly Shakes, was unlocking his bicycle outside the theatre when he overheard a conversation between two little old ladies who had just seen the play.

"The girl who played Juliet was so well spoken. She's the best Navajo actor I've ever seen."
"Navajo!? Betty, didn't you hear her accent? She's Australian!"
"Australian? Oh, what kind of Indian is that?"

Labels: acting

SNEAK PREVIEW CLICK HERE

Labels: acting, photos

Today I staged my very own you-know-what reaction video on members of the cast.



Watch Andrew on the left, who was just passing by and seems to have regretted his curiosity.

What's seen cannot be unseen.

Labels: acting, movies

Things you may not know about me, since I have been so slack in blogging, I haven't mentioned them.

Months ago, I got a free 30Gb Zune as a result of doing promotions for Zune at the Tweeter Center all summer. It is pretty boss, although I think the software is a little buggy and non-customizable. Still, I prefer it to iTunes and I rather enjoy shunning membership of the iPod borg.

I did get that job teaching theater at my local YMCA, and it's a load of fun, although after factoring in (a) the money I spend out of my own pocket organizing costumes for the performances because HOLY CHRIST HOW DO THEY EXPECT SMALL CHILDREN TO PERFORM WITHOUT COSTUMES, (b) the hours I spend putting together lesson plans and writing at least two scripts per semester, and (c) the fact I have zero time to take advantage of the free Y membership, I am actually losing money in the enterprise. But the kids are great.

Yesterday I called in sick to the YMCA because I was running a fever and had a sore throat from hell, and the woman in charge of youth programs had the hide to get tetchy and borderline rude about it. Like I have some sort of obligation to ignore debilitating malady for a $9-an-hour job.

I've decided that one day, when all my other ideas have dried up, I'd like to open my own drama school, where I can teach my own (AMEB/TCL) way. They'll start with learning how to recite poetry properly, then move onto monologues, and they'll get a good grounding in the physiology of voice production. I'll even run an eisteddfod, old-school-Australian-style. My graduates will land every theatrical and cinematic child role in Philadelphia, because nobody is teaching the next generation of actors how to audition, nobody.

Last night, thanks to an unexpected windfall, I did the UNTHINKABLE. I bought a guitar. A GUITAR. This is all thanks to an anti-Ron-Paul punk song* I wrote at the end of last semester. I discovered that my hands are too small to comfortably play bar chords, so I began looking into smaller guitars. My next revelation was that guitars are, on the whole, too heavy and would probably kill my neck after prolongued playing, so I searched for something lighter. Finally, the cheapskate in me wanted a great deal. Behold:



Daisy Rock's Stardust Retro-H semi-hollow electric guitar has been discontinued, so it's possible to find them for only $150 delivered. It's ordered and on its way.

Apparently I am going through a fulfillment phase of gear lust, because I also recently became the proud owner of one of these:



Years ago, I heard Brian Eno play with a Korg Kaoss Pad in a radio interview, improvising Autechre-style beats. Covetousness was instant. Two weeks ago, Matt found one on Craigslist for $200.

WRONG MAN = flowers and/or chocolates for Valentine's Day. LAME.
RIGHT MAN = Kaoss Pad 2 for Valentine's Day. YES.

Last year, after deciding that enough was enough, I decided to give antidepressants a try, specifically fluoxetine, as I was (am) pretty sure my SADS is getting worse. It was an interesting experience, sometimes negative, sometimes positive. On the negative side, I was neurotic and anxious for the first few weeks, my sleep patterns went haywire, and I continually had mildly disturbing dreams. On the positive side, my PMS disappeared. In fact, when I told Matt one day that it was that time of the month, he was stunned by my complete lack of symptoms. On the I-can't-decide-if-it's-good-or-bad side, Prozac took the edge off my drive. I didn't feel like I had to kill myself to do well at school, for example. This perhaps resulted in some substandard work, but I also allowed myself to relax more than I usually do, which some people claim is a healthy way to live.

We're coming into spring, and the dreams were becoming annoying, so I took myself off them. No side effects of cessation to report so far. The dreams, which I will document in a later entry, have gone away. A recent study says Prozac is useless, which is interesting.

I'm about to head into tech week for Romeo & Juliet. As previously mentioned, I am sick as a dog.

• Machines "to match man by 2029". I have been watching the dreadful Sarah Connor Chronicles on Hulu, so this headline gave me the giggles.

*I did actually record this, though it seemed stupid to put it online after Ron Paul received his expected drubbing in the primaries. Still, maybe I'll post it for lolz sometime.

Labels: acting, gadgets, jobs, music, psychobabble

Labels: acting

I alluded mysteriously a few weeks ago to "exciting things." I feel I can finally blog about them.

On the day after my last final, I was e-mailed by and auditioned for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival for their 2008 season. "But Melissa," I hear you say (I don't really, but in a perfect world where everyone asked the right questions to further a story, this is what you would say), "didn't you quit acting to become a music student?"

Why yes, I did. And as I have reported on this blog, the degree has been going splendidly. However, the roles in question were Juliet, and Marina in Pericles.

Aaaaaand I got them. Both of them.

So now I have to defer the spring semester of 2008 in favor of a four-month fulltime theatre gig. That's not ideal, but I'll be playing Juliet and Marina in a big city in a single season with a fantastic rep company (Matt and I saw The Taming of the Shrew there after my first callback audition, and it was top-notch). I couldn't turn that opportunity down unless I were in some kind of horrible accident that severed all four of my limbs and mangled my face.

I'm so happy. I need to find an Ashtanga yoga class or something to binge on for the next seven months. I'm going to need every ounce of strength and fitness and stamina I can muster.

• I Chat, Therefore I Am... - cute examples of AI chatbots.


• William Gibson is speaking at the Philadelphia Library. I am going to see Gibson in the flesh!


• The Male Condition - fascinating article about autism spectrum disorder as a sort of "hyper-maleness."


• Cat-cam. I want very, very much to do this to Moonlight, who spends almost all her time outdoors.

Labels: acting