Hey beautiful people, I'm back again with the second installment of my "look at me, I'm back and better than ever!" blog. And boy, am I better than ever. So many wonderful things have happened, even since my last blog, posted almost two weeks ago.
I am happy to tell you that since my last blog about my job at Station Bar & Lounge and its weekly open mic night, Honolulu Weekly magazine released their 2012 Best of Honolulu issue and named Station "Best Place to Catch Promising Musicians at an Open Mic." I couldn't be more proud. You can read the nice little blurb the Weekly wrote about us here.
And now it's time for my second blog installment!
Part 2: Miss On-Scene hits the stage...and gets to sit at the fun table!
As many of you may know, I am a bit of a part-time thespian. In 2004 I was bitten by the acting bug when I took my first acting class at Leeward Community College and saw their mainstage production of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses, directed by the beloved and much-missed Paul Cravath. Since then I'd had the privilege of acting in several LCC productions, both on the mainstage and in the lab theatre, and last year finally broke through my LCC box and made my Hawaii Shakespeare Festival debut. It was through the Hawaii theater community that I made friends with local director, actor and playwright, Troy M. Apostol.
Back in June I received an email from Troy with the subject line, "Hitting the Stage." The first paragraph of Troy's email went as follows:
Thanks to Troy and HTS, I had the honor of attending my first Po'okela Awards ceremony! For those who don't know, the Po'okelas is an annual ceremony that the Hawaii State Theater Council holds to honor the best of the theater season. Not quite on-par with the Na Hoku Hanohano Awards, but still a fun, glamourous and pseudo red-carpet event in my book. Troy and I planned on bringing swag to the party, dressing up as a pimp-and-ho. Now that's class!
I jumped and screamed with joy as my friends and fellow actors' names were announced, including fellow LCC-born actress Elexis Draine, when she was honored for Best Lead Female in a Play for her breakthrough performance in Kumu Kahua's Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre.
I may not have taken home any plaques, but I did get to take home half a centerpiece, great memories, and this amazing lesson: always try to sit at the fun table in the banquet hall of life. Like prom and other similar events, it's not about whether you win an award, be it a Po'okela or the title of Prom Queen. What matters is that you had a great time, saw all your friends, and it doesn't hurt to get a little belligerent and loud either. Do you really want to be the cheerleader spending the entire night worrying about your hair and whether or not you'll win the crown, or would you rather be the guy who hired a high-class escort to be your date, spiked the punch, and left during the principal's boring speech to get high behind the gym? I'd personally prefer the latter, but even if you don't go all the way, the point is just to have a great time with all your friends, laughing, eating, drinking, and cheering, and not caring about pomp and circumstance. Always be at the fun table: the table that laughs the loudest, looks the happiest, and gets everyone else to say, "I wanna be at that table." And in my own world, the Hawaii theatre community IS the fun table, and many thanks go out to Troy Apostol, Paul Cravath, Tony Pisculli, and everyone else that invited me to sit with them. :)
Links:
hittingthestage.com
HTS's complete list of 2012 Po'okela Honorees
Honolulu Pulse feature on the 2012 Po'okelas
I am happy to tell you that since my last blog about my job at Station Bar & Lounge and its weekly open mic night, Honolulu Weekly magazine released their 2012 Best of Honolulu issue and named Station "Best Place to Catch Promising Musicians at an Open Mic." I couldn't be more proud. You can read the nice little blurb the Weekly wrote about us here.
And now it's time for my second blog installment!
Part 2: Miss On-Scene hits the stage...and gets to sit at the fun table!
As many of you may know, I am a bit of a part-time thespian. In 2004 I was bitten by the acting bug when I took my first acting class at Leeward Community College and saw their mainstage production of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses, directed by the beloved and much-missed Paul Cravath. Since then I'd had the privilege of acting in several LCC productions, both on the mainstage and in the lab theatre, and last year finally broke through my LCC box and made my Hawaii Shakespeare Festival debut. It was through the Hawaii theater community that I made friends with local director, actor and playwright, Troy M. Apostol.
Back in June I received an email from Troy with the subject line, "Hitting the Stage." The first paragraph of Troy's email went as follows:
Given your experience and enthusiasm towards theatre, blogging, and reviews, I would like to invite you to be a contributing writer for our new peer-to-peer theatre review site, Hitting The Stage. The site is slated to go live very soon, and we're looking for good, forthright writers and reviewers to express their mana'o about Hawaii's plays, theatres, and theatre community."Needless to say, I was excited to come on board. I have to admit I was a little intimidated at first; as Troy had also brought on such Hawaii theatre heavy-hitters as Stu Hirayama, Jason Taglianetti and Dusty Behner. But even though my contributions to HTS.com have been minimal so far, it's an honor to be a part of something that our community has needed for decades now: a peer-to-peer review site providing more than just one voice for theater in Hawaii. That's about as much as I can say without going in to detail about what urged Troy and webmistress Kylie Coonse to start HTS.
Thanks to Troy and HTS, I had the honor of attending my first Po'okela Awards ceremony! For those who don't know, the Po'okelas is an annual ceremony that the Hawaii State Theater Council holds to honor the best of the theater season. Not quite on-par with the Na Hoku Hanohano Awards, but still a fun, glamourous and pseudo red-carpet event in my book. Troy and I planned on bringing swag to the party, dressing up as a pimp-and-ho. Now that's class!
Troy and myself, and former Poki winner Tafa'i Silipa at the Po'okelas. Photo courtesy of Troy Apostol.
The ceremony took place at the Ko'olau Ballroom located on the beautiful Windward side of Oahu. With banquet-style seating, themed centerpieces, and catered food and drinks, it felt a lot like high school prom. Most of the attendees were dressed in evening gowns and suits, although Troy and I were not the only outlandishly-dressed ones there. A few Poki veterans reassured me that I was indeed not dressed inappropriately, and that this ceremony seemed "tame" in comparison to previous years. We are, after all, a bunch of crazy thespians!
The theme of this year's ceremony was "Stars' Night Out," and we sure felt like a bunch of stars that night. I got to eat food, drink wine, schmooze it up with a bunch of people in the theater community, from old friends, to people I had only heard of and was honored to meet for the first time. I did not personally win any Pokis that night, but Hawaii Shakespeare Festival did take home a few awards for Henry IV.2, my first non-LCC play. One significant thing that made this year's Pokis different from all the ones before is that two more theater companies had just been adjudicated this year, Kumu Kahua Theatre and UH-Manoa's Kennedy theatre.
Myself, Hawaii Shakespeare Festival director Tony Pisculli, and just a few of his awards. Photo courtesy of Troy Apostol.
I jumped and screamed with joy as my friends and fellow actors' names were announced, including fellow LCC-born actress Elexis Draine, when she was honored for Best Lead Female in a Play for her breakthrough performance in Kumu Kahua's Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre.
I may not have taken home any plaques, but I did get to take home half a centerpiece, great memories, and this amazing lesson: always try to sit at the fun table in the banquet hall of life. Like prom and other similar events, it's not about whether you win an award, be it a Po'okela or the title of Prom Queen. What matters is that you had a great time, saw all your friends, and it doesn't hurt to get a little belligerent and loud either. Do you really want to be the cheerleader spending the entire night worrying about your hair and whether or not you'll win the crown, or would you rather be the guy who hired a high-class escort to be your date, spiked the punch, and left during the principal's boring speech to get high behind the gym? I'd personally prefer the latter, but even if you don't go all the way, the point is just to have a great time with all your friends, laughing, eating, drinking, and cheering, and not caring about pomp and circumstance. Always be at the fun table: the table that laughs the loudest, looks the happiest, and gets everyone else to say, "I wanna be at that table." And in my own world, the Hawaii theatre community IS the fun table, and many thanks go out to Troy Apostol, Paul Cravath, Tony Pisculli, and everyone else that invited me to sit with them. :)
Links:
hittingthestage.com
HTS's complete list of 2012 Po'okela Honorees
Honolulu Pulse feature on the 2012 Po'okelas