Oh vey - I was supposed to have this video done by the end of February and here it is May 1st and it's finally online. That is a personal worst for me and the NYCPlaywrights Play of the Month project.
It was a tsunami of ridiculous factors that caused this to take so long - there was all the damn snow, and there was the jury duty, and there was the 2-week long cold and worst of all there was the flaky flaky actors! I'd just about used up all my actor regulars - I try not to have an actor appear more than twice in these videos, although I have broken that rule with a couple of actors. So I was searching outside the usual pool of actors I work with and now I know why I work with the usual group - because they are by and large much more dependable than your typical actors. Liz, who I used several times last year, immediately agreed to do the video, quickly agreed on a date/time and showed up ready to act.
Before I asked Liz I asked:
- An actor who said she couldn't do it because she was going on a cruise in a couple of weeks. Mind you this is a monologue that takes less than an hour to shoot and the actor doesn't have to be off-book. And yet somehow she couldn't do it until after her week-long cruise.
- Another actor jerked me around for two weeks, dithering over the time and location (the frequent snowfall didn't help) and finally I gave up on her.
- Another actor was ready to go, but I was meeting her straight from jury duty and the cops confiscated my camera and when they returned it it was all out of battery power - which I didn't find out until 30 minutes before the actor was supposed to show up at the rehearsal studio in Manhattan and I didn't have the power cord necessary to re-charge the battery. The next time I emailed her to ask if she wanted to try again she didn't bother to respond to my email.
- Another actor I asked agreed right away, but couldn't be available for two weeks - and then a day before the shoot tried to get me to pay for her babysitter, which would double the amount I had offered to pay her for one hour of work.
And now I have to shoot the other monologue - if I can find another actor who is not a complete flake.