Fabulous news, friends! (Warning: Excessive exclamation point alert!) Last week, my solo masked show CLEAN ROOM was nominated for THREE Spotlight Awards by Seacoast Online! Read about my nominations for Best Actress, Best Original Script and Best Play, and then CAST YOUR VOTE before March 17th for the People’s Choice award! I’ll let you know in late April if I win any awards, but as they say, “It’s a thrill just to be nominated!” Thanks to everyone who has supported this show for helping me (and Brighina and Stupino) rock the Seacoast.
Also available online for you: Make Sure It’s Me composer Jason Crigler and his sister Marjorie Crigler presented a TEDx lecture in December and it’s now on the TED site! Click here to learn the remarkable story of Jason’s devastating brain hemorrhage, get a glimpse of his family’s important role in his recovery, and hear this phenomenal musician spin his experiences into song. Jason and I have been having inspiring, revelatory work sessions on the soundscape for Make Sure It’s Me, our project about Traumatic Brain Injury in the military. His compositions are yet another fantastic reason to catch the show in the spring! Steph N. and I have been thrilled to meet Marjorie as well, and I think you’ll be seeing more of these two around the West End Studio Theatre in the coming year.
In other news, Steph N. and I visited both the Hampton American Legion Post 35 and the Hampton Rotary Club in recent days to make short presentations about MSIM/nh. We met wonderful people, fielded many thoughtful questions, and shared some tough stories with our audiences there. Steph and I are deeply grateful for the time and attention given to us by the Hampton American Legion and Rotary members.
As a last note for today, I rehearsed last night with the Make Sure It’s Me/nh Library Team of Jenny Freeman, Conan Marchi, and Steph Riley (yes, we have two beloved Stephs in the ACT ONE family, our Executive Director Steph Nugent, and Lt. Col. Steph Riley of the NHNG). What a great time we had preparing our discussion and dramatic readings from the MSIM script by Kate Wenner. As sobering as the topic of TBI may be, we are looking forward to bringing our hour-long event to the Portsmouth Public Library on March 18th at 7 pm. We’ll also be visiting the Stratham, Hampton, Manchester and Nashua libraries during March and April. Visit the MSIM/nh home page for details on all the library events, as well as the full production in June at WEST.