What a difference 9 months make!
Here is a photo journal of what my last 9 months have looked like while living in Southern California working towards my MFA in Musical Theatre at San Diego State University.
I lived with my beautiful family from August to December in Temecula and commuted back and forth to SDSU.
My beautiful Temecula Family!
I turned their dining room table into my desk many a times working on the many research presentations that I was assigned. Over the 9 months, I researched and gave 1 hr+ lecture presentations on musical theatre composers spanning over 80 years starting with Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and Loewe, Maltby and Shire, Andrew Lippa and the musicals of the 1940s and 1960s.
Made great friendships with the other MFA students in my class and we all dressed up as Peter Pan characters. We even went and trick or treated at Disneyland. We were a sight!
Our MFA program paid for us to see some of the original cast members of Into the Woods and listened to Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine talk about their process and experiences working on the show!
I played Madame Thenardier in an EPIC concert version of Les Miserables. I loved playing that character! Our Jean Val Jean was Broadway veteran Ivan Rutherford. He was fantastic!
I had the pleasure teaching Acting One to the undergraduate students in the Theatre Department. Here is us goofing off during class.
We celebrated christmas as a MFA family around the tree at my Aunt and Uncle’s house.
Over christmas break, Adam and I made the last and final move from our home in Medford. It was a bittersweet moment.
Libretto Media (my production company) partnered up with SDSU and produced the Musical Theatre Nerd Alert web series launching soon!!
We are all NERDS!!
Adam and I became Disneyland annual passholders! We feel pretty special.
We live at the beach! But waited a long time before seeing a sunset at Sunset Cliff with my MFA classmate and friend Liv!
Feeling pretty powerful!
My MFA class got to sing during halftime of a SDSU Aztecs basketball game. SDSU has a really good bball team! Who knew?
We had ongoing dance classes and occasionally we had guest artists come in and work with us! This day was learning Ceili Irish dancing! Ready to perform in Brigadoon now!
Some of us in our class auditioned for local San Diego theatre companies at the Actors Alliance auditions.
There were many lunch time conversations on a small hill that we call Austria. Other popular places to eat lunch were Snow White corner, Pride Rock, and Mother Willow.
We celebrated many birthdays over the year. This one was for our great vocal coach Ron!!
I had the pleasure working as Archive Assistant in the MFA Musical Theatre archive. We have the largest archive west of the Mississippi!
Our spring musical was The Great American Trailer Park Musical. I played Bad Ass Betty. Her the other two characters in the picture were the narrators of the show.
Here is an action from our photo shoot!
We also got the opportunity to be in a national commercial airing this next basketball season on ESPN. I had the close up!
Here was our lovely cast and crew of the show.
Lastly, I had the opportunity to team teach with Courtney Kattengall an Acting for Non-Majors class to the undergraduate students. Love our goofy faces!
Whew!! What a full 9 months!! I have some exciting things planned for this summer that I will share with you all soon! One happening today – I am on my way to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada at the Canadian Association for Theatre Research conference. Pics to come! Thanks for taking the time and witnessing my journey. It has been a year to remember!
