Super Glossy!
⊆ June 20th, 2007 by courtney | ˜Do I get annoyed too easily? A pet peeve of mine is when people are surprised it’s cold in the winter or grossly hot in the summer here in New York. Another one is the ole “Is it (insert month/day/year here) already?” Yes, you nimrod, time moves forward, see? Yet here I am, on June 20, 2007, thinking, “Holy crap! It’s only a month away from the 2nd Annual Capital Fringe Festival?” It seemed like only yesterday I was driving back to NYC after closing my show in The District to pick up a friend for the second leg of my “Fringe Fest Mini-Tour 2006.” But, truly, who am I kidding? I barely took a month off after returning from tour last year to commence the process again: deciding which Fringes, filling out applications, rewrites, gathering funds, mailings, designing postcards, more rewrites, finding a production team, sending funding letters, finding housing, renting a car, more rewrites, taking photos, photoshopping photos, building the set, sewing the costumes, more rewrites, and, oh yeah… rehearsal. It’s exhausting. I know what I need (aside from about a full week of sleep beginning and ending with a 90 minute massage): an assistant. But as a solo performance actress who is still earning her living shlepping food to the masses and paying for such a tour out of her own pocket (with the much-appreciated exception of the Puffin Foundation Grant I received and all the individual donations this year), having an assistant seems like a costly luxury. Maybe NYU has a department from which I can extract an intern?
So I guess the intention of this blog is to attempt to relay the experience of bringing my show to the DC Capital Fringe Festival. Essentially, here’s the best way for you to know what I’m experiencing right now: Do not sleep for 36 hours. Run the length of the District’s metropolitan area at a full sprint. Drink 4 pots of coffee. Think about all the stuff you want to accomplish in your life and pretend your deadline is in a week. Watch “The Exorcist.” Twice. Drink 4 more pots of coffee. Sit at a computer and attempt to write an intelligible sentence. Bon voyage!
The other intention of this blog is to get you to see my latest show, “Super Glossy!” So here’s the press release:
COURTNEY MCLEAN RETURNS TO FRINGE FESTIVALS IN 2007 WITH “SUPER GLOSSY!” - A SCIENCE FICTION SATIRE ON WOMEN’S MAGAZINES!
New York, NY - New York-based solo performance actress Courtney McLean proudly presents her second solo play, Super Glossy!, a sci-fi satire on women’s magazines, traveling in July to Washington DC for the 2nd Annual Capital Fringe Festival, in August to Minneapolis, MN for the Minnesota Fringe Festival and in September to San Francisco, CA for the San Francisco Fringe Festival.
Please see http://www.courtneymclean.com for showdates, times, and locations.
Cosmopolitan (the magazine. Or the drink - about 3 or 4 of them) meets The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby meets The Venture Bros in “Super Glossy!,” a science fiction satire on the ridiculous corner of the media that is women’s magazines. When Helen Camela Wheating, the brains behind the Distraction and Homogenization Machine, discovers her latest Role Model, Melinda D’Alteo, currently the biggest celebrity in the world, is infertile, it’s a race to find the surrogate mother of the next generation of Distraction Role Models. The first of which will be the new home for Helen’s consciousness so that she can live and control women’s minds forever. Enter Jane Fuller, dorky and single self-proclaimed feminist and adversary of the beauty industry who finds herself stuck between sacrificing her sense of self for “love” or the possibility of remaining alone: “every woman’s fear!” Jane unwittingly becomes a pawn in the Distraction and Homogenization Machine’s plot to keep women enslaved to beauty and celebrity idolatry. Inspired by Heather Woodbury’s living novel performance pieces, “Super Glossy!” is a living magazine, complete with the editor’s and readers’ letters, ads for silly and unnecessary beauty products, horoscopes, and “dos and don’ts.
“Clone Courtney as many times as you need for kick-ass theatre guaranteed” - Scott Stein, Maxim magazine
“McLean tears at breakneck speed through a universe of colorful characters… and so accomplishes the highest moral function of theater - to promote understanding.” - DC Theatre Reviews (about “Normal-C”)
“An imaginative writer… spunky performance… funny and endearing with a seductive twinkle in her eye.” - nytheatre.com
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If this doesn’t getcha, hopefully a month chock-full of my account of the pre-Fringe escapades will. Stay tuned, people!
