Wednesday, January 31, 2007

ANDREA's growing!

I'm expanding ANDREA for the New York debut. Here's a fresh-off-the-pixel snippet (subject to editing, of course):

My bank account’s dwindling because I make – can you guess? Take a guess. Two hundred fifty U.S. dollars a month. Yep, that’s right. Oh, I get a few freebies thrown in with my teaching contract – free soup in the school cafeteria, which I and the rest of the teachers choke down at our table in the corner while the kids scream and bicker and throw spoons. You can tell the teachers’ table from the kids’ table because we have a cloth tablecloth, and they get paper.

Theatremania!

Check out the TheatreMania page on ANDREA!

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

That last posting got me to wondering if CZ train fares have gone up. Looks like they've climbed, but (by US-dollar standards) aren't too bad!

Kundera rides the rails

I'm on the train from Pardubice to Prague. It's 2002. I've got Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being spread out across my lap.

I've forgotten the sparse fields, which in less than a week during spring will blossom green and generous, outside my window. I've managed to tune out the snoring old man en route to a doctor's appointment. I've somehow ripped my eyes away from the wild-eyed Czech girl sprawled across from me, her shirt entirely undone save for one button near her midriff.

I'm busy.

I'm reading.

Tomas came to this conclusion: Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

I wrestled to make sense of that then.

Today I've stopped wrestling, but I still find Kundera's concept interesting.

Doesn't love tie these two desires -- sleep and sex -- together?

In Prague, they didn't. But in Prague, what I had was not love. What I had was a name, a single being on which to focus my feelings when the loneliness grew like ice.

Today, what I have is different.

Better.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

ANDREA's on special for teen audiences!

Check it out here!

"Good Day"

I learned to love this song after I came home from the Czech Republic -- the overseas stint that inspired ANDREA. Just such a simple, happy little bit that makes you feel good.

Good Day
Luce

Well I wake up to a sky so blue
With my girlfriend in the other room
Got the coffee on and the pancakes done
The cat's sleeping outside in the sun

The tv sings its morning blues
And it’s all the same with all the news
But she walks up, smiles, kisses me
And says your coffee’s done.

Then starts singing.
Yeah yeah yeah
She is singing.

Well It’s a pretty good day.
I’m lookin’ forward to tomorrow
To have a pretty good day.
again...

Well it’s a pretty good day
I’m looking forward to tomorrow
To have a pretty good day
Yeah we’ll have a good day.

So I lace my boots up and step outside
Catch a cab cause my car died
And I go to work with my friend Dan
Paintin’ houses the best we can

On my way back home I try and mix it up
Walk halfway then take a bus
And as it pulls up and the doors open
I hear the bus driver say "step up" please "STEP UP"

And I’m singing, And I’m singing
Yeah yeah yeah
And I’m singing yeah yeah yeah yeah
Some guy looks over and says ‘how ya doin’?’ I say...

Well it’s a pretty good day
I’m looking forward to tomorrow
To have a pretty good day
Yeah yeah yeah

Well it’s a pretty good day
I’m looking forward to tomorrow
To have a pretty good day
Yeah we''ll have a good day

And through the window
There’s a whole world
And I’m watching all the people
All the faces and the places I have yet to go

And the sunshine now it’s fading
And my girlfriend she’s waiting
And I bet that she’s outside
Sleeping in the shade

Cause it’s a pretty good day
I’m looking forward to tomorrow
To have a pretty good day
Yeah, again...

Well it’s a pretty good day
I’m looking forward to tomorrow
To have a pretty good day
Yeah, we'll have a good day

It’s a good day
Yeah.....yeah....yeah
It’s a good day

Monday, January 22, 2007

Constant Contact

I'd like to give a shout-out to Constant Contact, a piece of free (for a trial period) software that's helping me get the word out about the show. I have no professional stake in them -- they were recommended by the FRIGID folk -- but I've found them very personable and their software a lot of fun to use.

I've also been finding TheaterMania and Fractured Atlas great resources, and wanted to give them a public thumbs-up.

Vinohrady, that's where I want to be!

I'm excited to be staying in Vinohrady, my favorite part of Prague, during the Prague Fringe!

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Be ANDREA's MySpace friend!

Visit ANDREA's MySpace page and be as cool as my 21-year-old brother. Come on, you know you want to.

Get your daily dose of ANDREA updates!

It's easy: Subscribe!

It's right over there -- yeah, there, to the right.

If you subscribe, I promise not to spam. I promise to entertain. Pinky-swear!

Friday, January 19, 2007

The official FRIGID page(s)!

Here's the main show page -- scroll down to "Under St. Mark's" to find ANDREA.

And here's the show-specific page. Check it out!

Show Schedule

As found on the FRIGID Fest website, here are the dates when you'll be able to see ANDREA:

Monday, March 12, 6 pm;
Tuesday, March 13, 7:30 pm;
Wednesday, March 14, 6 pm;
Friday, March 16, 10:30 pm;
Saturday, March 17, 5:30 pm;
Sunday, March 18, 1 pm.


All shows will be at the Under St. Mark's theater, 94 St. Mark's Place between 1st Ave and Avenue A. Subway denizens: 6 to Astor Place. Tickets are $5. I'll buy drinks for those who applaud the loudest.

Here's "Andrea"!

Here's the official press release I'm sending out about the show. More details to follow!


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Allison Landa

2214 ½ Grant St.

Berkeley, CA 94703

(510) 654-6512 – home office

(510) 588-6943 – mobile

allison@allisonlanda.com

www.allisonlanda.com

Think Your Roommate’s a Nightmare? Meet ‘Andrea’

Berkeley, CA – January 18, 2007 – She’ll make a key for you. But if you bring friends over, make sure they don’t steal nothin’.

Allison Landa decided not to rent the room. But she’s re-enacting her meeting with a frightening potential roommate – and this time, you’re invited. Landa will perform her solo show “Andrea” at New York City’s FRIGID Fest from March 11-18, 2007.

“Andrea” is based on Landa’s six-month teaching stint in a small town an hour outside of Prague. “I did more learning than teaching,” she recalls in her show. “I learned that I wasn’t a small-town girl. And I learned that I wasn’t a teacher. Obviously, things were going to have to change.”

That hope for change materialized in the form of Andrea, whose Prague apartment just happened to have an empty bedroom. Furnished, even. But the deal wasn’t so sweet.

“She represented everything I feared at the time,” Landa recalls. “She was lonely, angry, a substance abuser, a McDonald’s addict. She hated the world and everything in it. And at the time, I was starting to feel the same way.”

She declined Andrea’s offer and rode out the teaching gig. Then she came home to the San Francisco Bay Area and began to build a life she could love – a Masters degree in fiction, a career as a freelance writer and editor, and a relationship with a nice Jewish boy she met almost immediately after coming home from Europe.

“Maybe I should thank Andrea,” Landa says. “Who knows?”

She may actually get the chance. Two months after the FRIGID Fest comes to a close, Landa will bring “Andrea” to the Prague Fringe Festival. “If she shows up,” Landa says, “I’ll make sure she gets in for free.”

For more information about “Andrea”, call Allison Landa at (510) 654-6512 or visit the show’s homepage at www.andrea-solo-show.blogspot.com. To learn more about Allison Landa, visit www.allisonlanda.com. For more information on the FRIGID Fest, visit www.frigidfest.com.

- END -