Raising eyebrows

Beaten Hearts is really up and running now.  On Monday the cast assembled - with new member Max, another recruit from The Sport of Acting, my Tuesday night class - and read through the plays, switching roles around as Cindy figured out the final casting of each one.  It's great to see it starting to take shape as I envisage these talented actors making these familiar roles their own.  As the only non-American in the ensemble, I will be adopting an American accent for all but one of my characters.  The line-up of plays differs slightly to the original Beaten Hearts, but remains a mix of comic and dramatic explorations of love found and lost, unrequited and avenged.  It's a bittersweet show, just how I like it.

On Wednesday I had a personal trainer session, one of those freebies one gets when first joining a gym, a sampler to encourage you to pay for more.  PT is where the gym really makes its money, considering how cheap membership is.  Amber certainly put me through my paces, but the most startling discovery was my percentage body fat.  I'm not going to reveal it in a public forum, but suffice to say it is just above what is considered 'average'.  I have a fairly small frame so I guess that disguises it, but my goodness!  I knew I had lost condition over the last few months - yoga is great but as a cardio, fat-burning workout it can't compete with Step and Pump classes - but this was still a shock.  Not to worry, since joining the gym three weeks ago, I have committed to working out 6 days a week (including yoga class). 

Thursday night was part two of the agent showcase.  The two representatives present seemed less exhausted than those last week.  Once again, I arrived early to claim one of the first few audition times, and elected not to go first this time, but third.  This gave me more time to get jittery before entering the room, but as sometimes happens in these situations, once I started performing I felt calm and in control.  I really enjoyed playing the scene and felt like I hit all the right beats.  This time I also brought in my spectacles to use like reading glasses (I was playing a lawyer).  It gave me an extra bit of 'business' (physical activity) and the chance to show the agents a different 'look'; glasses on, glasses off.  Specs are a novelty in actor-land, and very much stereotyped.  I'm happy to exploit that stereotype; intellectual/scientist/psychiatrist/the smart chick.   Bring it on! 

In the spirit of putting my best foot forward for the showcase - and the biz in general - I took Katherine's advice and gave my eyebrows the Hollywood treatment.  Nothing too drastic, but they look neater, more groomed, than before.  Shaping means plucking of course.  There are three main methods of executing this: tweezers, wax and thread.  Threading is considered the most gentle and is an intriguing art whereby a loop of cotton thread is rolled and twisted across the skin, capturing errant hairs in its path.  It's difficult to describe, but the sensation of the thread passing over ostensibly hairless areas (such as the forehead) where it picks up the very finest hairs, virtually invisible to the naked eye, is like a very mild electric shock.  It's a kind of massage, quite pleasant.  Tackling the tougher, visible hairs of the brow is another matter of course, and being a novice I found it a little painful.  But I'm sure I'll get used to it, like leg and bikini waxing.  Guys, are you still reading?  Unfortunately, tweezers were, inevitably, necessary to address certain recalcitrant hairs and for the precision end of the shaping.  I must say, when I viewed the result in a mirror, I was surprised (and somewhat relieved) to discover that less brow had been removed than I thought.