Breathe in - Exhale

Let's see - when I last posted on here I was packing to leave for my junior year of college. I sit here now with about a week and a half left until I technically become a senior.  Naturally, a lot has happened since that last post. I'm going to make this nice and easy (though not necessarily quick) with a bulleted list of several of the highlights. 

School/Professional

• I auditioned for all the Opera/Music Theatre productions at school, as OCU music theatre majors are required to do.  I thought this might be my semester, what with my new professional credits and being higher up on the food chain as an upperclassman.  Apparently, it was not to be - I didn't even score a callback.  However, unbeknownst to me, there had been a director from CityRep (Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre) sitting in on the Little Women auditions.  I received an email from him calling me in to audition for the role of The Mute in The Fantasticks.  I sent up a prayer of thanks to God for blessing me with a car this year and drove down to the audition.  The director gave some vague directions for what he wanted us to improv during the overture of the show.  I volunteered to go first, thinking it would be a test run with the actual audition following.  I went up and did my thing, throwing in some ballet steps for fun.  He said, "Thank you Dylan. That was great." and I sat down, my sole turn played.  As I watched each following actor build upon what I had done, I figured that this would not be the job for me.  I went home resigned to another semester of working on my craft without performing.  I got a phone call about a week later offering me the understudy position.  I accepted it without a moment's hesitation.  Thrilled.  What a rewarding experience it turned out to be.  It was through working on this production as an understudy, and later an assistant stage manager, that I earned my entrance into the Actor's Equity Membership Candidacy program.  I currently have 8 work weeks accumulated toward a 50 week goal of getting my Equity card and joining the union!  More importantly, I made invaluable connections with the production team at CityRep that will help me with future auditions!
• I spent a semester performing with OCU Rhythms, which is our school's student-run hip-hop and stomp team.  I had been meaning to do it since my freshman year, but I always came up with excuses.  I did not allow excuses for myself this time.  I said yes to everything that came my way - including Rhythms.  I may have not been able to perform at all of their events or attend all the practices, but I had a blast. 
• I performed in my second Senior Choreography Showcase. We were the most fun that stage saw all night. Rock around the clock...what a blast.
• I told that story a few bullets ago about how this was supposed to be my year and how it turned out not to be.  Come January, I find out how dead wrong I was.  Not only was I cast in the spring opera production, The Ballad of Baby Doe, I am opening our spring musical Urinetown this Friday!  It is rare for any one student to be cast twice in a semester.  I feel honored to have had such a privilege.  I love having been a part of both productions.

Social/Relationships

This will be a much shorter list, seeing as many of the events and happenings are private occurrences that should not be aired out on a public blog.  Any references to specific happenings will be entirely vague.
 

One thing I will say is that I have been blessed with the most incredible social network of my life this year.  I have friends that know are there for me 100% 24/7 and vice-versa.  I could go on listing endless inside jokes and happy little moments, but my friends know who they are and know all of our happy little moments and inside jokes.  I am completely in love with my friends.  Completely and entirely in love.
 

Love is not a word I would use in describing my "love life."  Marilyn Monroe was quoted as saying "A smart girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe and leaves before she is left." I decided to apply that to my own outlook on dating.  To shield myself from heartbreak, which just takes too much time - time I don't have, I entered every dating situation ready to leave it aside at the first sign of trouble.  That's exactly what I did.  Love was not on the menu.  My heart was not in it.  I passed over several quality guys because I believed, perhaps erroneously that I did not need or want them.  The second I felt that they might be getting too attached, I had to stop seeing them.  I couldn't bear the thought that I might get attached as well and lose my drive and momentum.  I ran the show.  I still run the show - and this show has no room for love.  I'm no longer okay with that - but as it turns out, the quality guys I turned away before have shifted their attentions elsewhere.  I'm left now with the guys who are interested in getting only one thing from me...and that shop is closed.  I'm happy where I am.  I'm not going to settle for just anyone.  I have standards and that will never change.  I have faith that something right will appear if I keep my eyes open long enough.

 

I was talking to my friend Kate about the difficulty of dating as actors.  Unlike other people, who have some amount of choice in where their life will take them, actors cannot compromise and agree to stay in Oklahoma with the man of their dreams.  If an actor really wants success, he has to go out and make his success.  Usually that means auditioning in New York City.  Every audition for respectable work across the country comes through NYC.  I have friends that ship out on a national tour or fly to do a regional production after being in the city for three months, suddenly needing to sublet their apartments, often for months at a time.  With a lifestyle like that, how can anything be stable?  As actors, we have ourselves.  That is the only constant we can depend on.  There is a good reason that we are called gypsies.  There is no "home" to come back to.  I suppose you have your apartment in the city and your parents' place in what will in time be Florida, but there is really no constant place that you come home to every single day.  It always changes.  In a constant environment of change, it becomes impossible to think of people you date as being in it for the long haul.  The long haul involves them compromising their lives to follow you on your pursuit of your career.

I cannot imagine anyone I have dated doing that for me - nor would I want them to.  My philosophy is that everything must exist in the moment.  If you are happy with someone, it is in that moment that you are happy with them.  If you stay in the moment and live there, you can find peace amidst constant change and uncertainty.  It's what I try to do.  There is no future save for my own.