Melissa Dunphy

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

Last week, I learned that if I am juuuust stressed enough, I get some crazy digestion problems which involve having no appetite, throwing up half my meals when I force myself to eat, and getting reflux after eating the other half. I've never had that happen before, so I suppose I was more stressed than I've ever been. It certainly felt so. Alternatively, I'm old and don't deal with stress as well as I used to.

I should probably have a tag 'illness' for this blog, because it seems a good proportion of my posts are about medical problems; I recall a stretch a couple of years ago when I mostly discussed the terrorism committed by my urinary tract, which the rest of my body views with Republican-like paranoia to this day. I can't bring myself to create the label, however, because I already feel I'm turning into an old woman.

On the phone this week, my mother informed me matter-of-factly that I am now middle-aged, since I might as well be thirty.

She also received my new headshot in the mail, and her only comment? "You're getting old."
"But do you like the picture?" I pressed, offended hysteria rising like the bile in my acid-etched esophagus.
"Weeell, I guess you look pretty, but you're old. There are so many lines around your eyes. I took it to the tenant in the front flat, and he said, 'She's aging. It's natural.'"

I sent her a spiteful e-mail afterward asking (sarcastically) if she would send me money for plastic surgery so I don't disappoint her in future photographs. I guess I should call her to kiss and make up sometime tonight.

The headshot in question can currently be viewed on my Facebook and MySpace profiles, in case you're curious.

*The irony is that my heartburn is caused by affairs of the heart -- and neither of these ailments has anything to do with the cardiac organ. Suck it, Alanis Morrisette.

Labels: health, love, photos

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

SNEAK PREVIEW CLICK HERE

Labels: acting, photos

If you haven't seen the picture all over my Facebook/Myspace profiles, I had myself a haircut last weekend, right before the lovely Cliff and Danan and Tony Randazzo descended upon our house for a mini ETS get-together. Not that I have much time these days to spend on ETS, but it is nice to see people again in the flesh.

More daring even than my haircut, I am entering L'homme Armé in the SEAMUS electroacoustic composition competition, since I don't have anything to lose; nothing is going to come of it, because the piece is in a vastly different style to the usual SEAMUS ambient noise fare. The deadline is before the New Music concert, so I had to mock up something approaching a recording this weekend. The daring part is posting it here so you can listen to it.

• Pedal harpsichord


• Former colleague Rene Gutel in "Dawn aka The Life Crepuscular"


• Robert Siegel destroys White House counsel Ed Gillespie.

Labels: music, photos

Here I am playing the theremin. This was taken the night I finished it, so I don't really have a technique yet. In the days since, I've started playing it in a manner vaguely similar to the way Lydia Kavina plays it. Here also is a picture of Matt demonstrating the controversial "angling" technique, which he figured out on his own in about five minutes.

Yes, making a theremin turns your house into a mess.

Over the weekend, I went to an Alarm Will Sound concert. They are amazing. Amazing. I want to shun all worldly concerns and devote my life to writing a piece of music good enough for them to play. They play arrangements of Aphex Twin and Autechre tracks. They make chaos sound tight. They perform - and you can't help but love every sound they make when you watch them.

Joining the ensemble for this and another concert on the 24th was a friend from high school, extraordinary clarinettist Eileen Mack. It has been twelve years since we were in high school together. Now we're in the same part of the United States, and she's playing with Alarm Will Sound, with whom I'm newly obsessed. Wacky. We got drunk together at an AWS house party afterwards. Well, I got drunk. Eileen held her liquor. I am a Cadbury.

I also smoked too many cigarettes, causing the high Bb I tried to hit for my choir audition (solo for upcoming concert) to sound ... interesting. Also, I lost the ability to trill. Nevermind; I didn't really expect or want to be given a solo - there is a soprano at West Chester who also auditioned with a voice so perfect it makes me want to believe in God again.

• I transcribed this Danny Elfman interview for Composing Thoughts. More to come sometime soon!


• New GTA IV Trailer has music from Koyaanisqatsi.


• As his blog proves, Matt and I finally met John Clare this past weekend. Scroll down for hilarious pictorial evidence.


• I saw a couple of brilliant instances of puppetry on the web yesterday: Star Wars Hands Battle and Funny sponge.


• Speaking of Star Wars, Cliff pointed out this gem of an apartment he found on Craigslist. Star Wars Duplex with fireplace, bar, theatre.

Labels: gadgets, music, photos

Feeling a little nuts. Just spent nine hours non-stop soldering. No plumbing disaster this time - I now have a complete circuit board for my theremin.

This is the first circuit board I have ever made from scratch. (Well, I assembled all the circuitry from a kit. Obviously, I didn't make the actual board, because that would be insane.) I was a little daunted when I opened the box to find a jumbled bag containing hundreds of resisters, diodes, and capacitors, and a virgin board, but it wasn't all that bad. If only Mr. Hayward, my high school physics teacher, could see me now.

I really wish soldering were more highly regarded as a skill (i.e. that I could make my mother proud by earning a Ph.D. in Advanced Soldering, then go on to have a distinguished soldering career complete with fame and loads of money), because, damn, I am better at soldering than I am at just about anything - this includes singing, which I did at a church this morning, for money, goodness.

Also, one day I am going to write a cyberpunk novel in which there exists a drug called flux, which would of course come in a paste and be burnt and inhaled a la heroin.

As you can see, I now have bright orange hair. The congregation seemed to like it, surprisingly, even the elderly ladies. It was a very cool church (as far as churches go).

This weekend I learned that the Danish word for 'end' (in the context of, for example, 'The End' on the final interstitial of a silent film from 1916), is 'slut.'

• Excerpts from Werner Herzog's documentary 'My Best Fiend.' I must find this. Hearts for Herzog; that man is some kind of genius.


• "Philip Glass is the first cousin once removed of Ira Glass, host of the nationally syndicated radio show This American Life. Philip Glass's father is Ira Glass's great uncle." This factoid utterly blew my mind.

Labels: gadgets, music, photos

Here's a picture. It's a snow day. I should be catching up on school work, but instead I'm cleaning the house, blogging, and taking pictures of myself. Lame.

"My Violent Heart" from the new NIN album Year Zero is Trent Reznor's Valentine's Day gift to the world. I like it. However, the first time I heard it (through the bedroom floor this morning while half-asleep as Matt was playing it downstairs), I thought it was a remix of the Sam & Dave soul hit "Hold On, I'm Coming." You'll understand when you get to the chorus. Maybe.

• Countless times in the last fifteen years, I have complained that in a perfect world, libraries and museums would be open 24 hours. Maybe I'll move to Cleveland.


• Nora the Piano-Playing Cat, courtesy of Monique. I have become completely obsessed with this.


• Mario Bros on flute with simultaneous beatboxing. This is the only conceivable reason I can think of to take up the flute.


• Fucking terrifying interview from The New Yorker about just how right-wing and fucked up the creator of 24 is.

Labels: music, photos

Are you in the Philly area? A good person? Can you keep a cat?

Our next-door neighbors moved house and abandoned their cat. Another neighbor got in touch with them about it, and their response was "We don't want her. We have dogs now."

Yeah, I know. Don't get me started.

So, instead of leaving this incredibly sweet and friendly cat to freeze to death over the winter, we've taken her in temporarily as of last night. I have no idea what her name is, so I'm calling her Ginger. We can't keep her permanently, though, because we already have two cats, and she doesn't get along with them (it's hard to get adult females to play nice with each other). Can anyone out there keep a cat?

She is so beautiful, and is very social around people. She loves being petted, even by complete strangers, and I'm sure she'd be wonderful with children too. She's well toilet trained (was quite happy going in one of my other cat's litter boxes) and not at all fussy about the food she eats. She's been living on the streets for a couple of weeks now, and is so grateful for shelter, sustenance and affection -- anyone who has taken in a stray cat will tell you that they're twice as loyal as cats that haven't seen the hard life.

Please give her a good home! We really don't want to take her to the SPCA because it's a kill shelter, and the only no-kill shelter in the area isn't taking surrenders because they are full.

I'd estimate she's a year or two old. Obviously, I don't have vet records for her, but she seems really healthy. I'm assuming she's neutered, but only because she goes outdoors all the time, and I've never seen her with kittens.

If you can take her in, please contact me. And if you can't take her, please spread the word!

Labels: cats, photos

I nearly called in during a radio show again the other day. This time, there was an astrophysicist (apparently the host of a new Nova program, and hailed as the successor to Carl Sagan) on Science Friday discussing, well, science. Anyway, I wanted to ask about the effect of the space program on our environment, especially given the push by some entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos to turn space into a tourist destination. If the regular earth-bound aeronautical industry vastly affects weather patterns and air quality, what would commercialized space flight do?

Then I discovered that my phone service has been suspended. During finals last month, I forgot to pay a bunch of bills. They all came in late this month, so we're flat broke. No phone for me! It doesn't really matter, since I never answer it anyway, but I couldn't ask my question.

I've been here for years, but the accent foibles continue. One night, a few weeks ago, I asked Matt to help me take the clothes off the line "before the dew gets them." He thought I had developed sudden paranoic antisemitic tendencies.

David Bowie turns 60 today. Happy birthday, Mr Bowie.

Labels: photos