I’ve arrived in NYC where I will be until Thursday morning. I’m reading from Shades of Milk and Honey at the KGB Fantastic Fiction series on Wednesday night with Laura Anne Gilman. You should come. For those who have been following my travel adventures, you will be pleased and baffled to know that I had […]
Arrived in NYC, reading, puppets, and bedtime Read More »
Someone just asked me if I like fan mail and my immediate thought was “Yes! I love getting fan mail,” but you have to understand… See, the VAST majority of the fan mail I’ve received has been from the Kindergarten-6th grade crowd in the form of a homework assignment after a puppet show. There are
The kind of fan mail I’m used to… Read More »
There’s more information about the novel and the people behind the traler at http://www.ShadesOfMilkAndHoney.com/trailer. I will shamelessly ask that you pass that link around to anyone that you think might like it. Meanwhile, I thought you might like to know a little about how the trailer is made. We’re using a style of puppetry called
Introducing the Shades of Milk and Honey book trailer Read More »
I was talking with a friend of mine and he said that my blog read like “Mary’s Greatest Hits,” because I never talk about the things that go wrong. This surprised me since most of my best puppetry stories are of shows that go horribly, horribly wrong. But he’s right. When I talk about television
Things that go horribly, horribly wrong OR The worst show I ever did Read More »
Awesome! My friends at the Puppet Kitchen were on ABC news this week. Check it out. See! Saying things like “Pass me an eyeball” is perfectly natural.
The Puppet Kitchen on ABC news Read More »
Props master, Eric Hart, speaks intelligently about sharing knowledge. We do not invent things whole cloth out of the depths of our brains. Every idea we have is formed by making connections with all the experiences we have absorbed. Every book we read, play we watch, conversation we have, event we witness, song we hear
On sharing and secret knowledge Read More »
Why did I think that two weeks would be enough time to be here? Last night, after I returned from Philadelphia, I went to Henson Alternative: Stuffed and Unstrung with Jodi, Emily and Delia. It was loads of fun and some pretty impressive improv. With Muppets. Then this morning, I went uptown to meet with
Today and yesterday in a nutshell. Read More »
The National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neil Theater center is one of my favorite things. It’s a ten-day intensive workshop focused on performance and the development of new works. At the end there are performances. This is from a couple of years ago and a fine example of puppeteer humor. Every person at the
Puppeteer humor at the O’Neal National Puppetry Conference Read More »
I should probably explain a little bit about what happens after an audition. In fiction, when I submit a story I will eventually hear back from a market with either an acceptance or a rejection. With auditions, you only hear back if they want to invite you on to the next level. So the thing
My post audition process Read More »
You know how you can tell when someone on tour has gone insane? It’s when they make something like this. So hard to look away… These are not the horse puppets you are looking for…
My Little Pony singing songs from Dreamgirls Read More »
It turns out that thinking of this as a callback wasn’t quite accurate. This was really for a different part within the same show, I think, since I was the only woman there who had also been tried on the big horse. The group was multi-ethnic which was really nice to see especially since the
The second audition report Read More »
I’m off to my audition. It isn’t until 3pm but I want to allow an hour to get there — love NY — and figure I’ll spend the remaining time at Central Park watching the carriage horses. Also, sitting still is really no longer an option. I spent the evening working on the scene with
Off to the races– er… the callback Read More »
I’m going in tomorrow with 8 other women for a mini-workshop/audition for the colt Joey. The female puppeteer on it also doubles as a French woman in the show. After the workshop, they’ll also have me read the scene as an actor. The actor part is significantly harder for me because she is, um, French
I’ve just had the audition and frankly have no idea how I did. But I had fun. They had Topthorn here, the black horse. He is a gorgeous, gorgeous puppet that just wants to do the work if you don’t fight him. We spent most of the time just trying to walk. Walking is a
This week is definitely about the disparate careers that I have. Yesterday was all about the fiction side of my life. I started the morning at Macmillan Audio with an interview about recording Shades of Milk and Honey. That was fun and strange at the same time. It was lovely to actually get to meet
Books, KGB, and puppets Read More »