Southern Fried, Lady Lay, Taste, and other things that will amaze you!

After Southern Fried Burlesque Fest...which was amazing and I cannot say enough good things about everyone that was involved.  Frankly though it deserves it's own post, but I just am so far behind that's just not going to happen for me.  Our special guests: Roxie D'Lite, Russell Bruner, Toni Elling, Juith Stein, Orchid Mei, Talloolah Love, Kisa von Teasa and all of our amazing performers in all the showcase and the competitors for the crown.  So proud that Atlanta's own Lola le Soleil won the Southern Fried Queen.  It's our first time keeping the crown in state!  The hotel was amazing and we will be going back next year, our dates are March 20-23, 2014 and we hope that you will all save the date.  In lieu of the fact that I'm so far behind, go see the pretty pictures that StunGun Photography took, you can click the link and see their awesome show shots.  They were also nice enough to take some studio shots as well.

So why have I been so far behind?  Well, as I started to say before I got distracted...after Southern Fried Burlesque Fest I immediately started working as Lighting Designer for an awesome production over at 7 Stages called Lady Lay.  This was moderately terrifying as I had never designed a full show before, especially of this magnitude.  There's stuff flying in from all over the place, crashing all around and ruining all of my standard sites lines and creating shadows.  So that was what I had to work around.  Did I also mention that the last two weeks of tech were on top of my finals for school?  Yeah, that was fun.  So I get the show open, finish up my finals and then there are more events!

Taste of Theater is 7 Stages annual fundraiser which somehow, during all of this craziness, I agreed to help out with by booking and wrangling performers, helping herd cats (aka stage manage), costume about 15 people and make sure everything was loaded out at the end of the night.  Lady Lay opened on April 27th, my last final was on May 2nd, Taste of Theater was on May 3rd.  It was a lot of fun and we raised some money for the theater and everything was amazing.  There were performers from Musee de Couer, The Imperial Opa Circus and many Syrens of the South alumni.  The thing I love the most about Syrens not being a troupe is that we get to work with everyone.

So yeah, that's been my past month.  Coming up?  Tonight I am going to a fundraiser for Southern Fried Burlesque Fest...oh yeah, I'm producing it so add that to the list of things that I've been working on the past month.  We still have a few bills to pay off from 2013 so we need to get those straightened out ASAP.  $3000 and then we need $2000 to get the deposit for next year, total of $5000.  I sadly just can't do out of pocket any more so here's hoping that everyone has really enjoyed the past 3 years so we can raise the money to keep it going.  It costs around $15000 to put on the festival, it's a lot of money but it's a lot of fun too.  Sure, I don't get paid for it, none of us do,  and the fest owes me a little over $10,000 for the past four years of work, but we have a great time and it's the most expensive b-day party I could possibly have!

Hopefully things will be calmed down enough for a minute that I can get caught up on life.  So many people I haven't gotten to see, more theater gigs coming up, more burlesque shows and teaching more classes at Studio Burlesque.  It's crazy and it's busy and moderately insane, but I love it and it makes me happy.  If I could seriously just get paid to be in a theater all the time and make a living that way I would.  Someday....but until then I'm going to continue being insane and having a great time doing it.