#biffma

I saw a film at the Berkshire International Film Festival Saturday that I really enjoyed. It was called A Letter to Elia. It was a 60 min movie about how much film director Elia Kazan's work meant to Martin Scorsese. It was written and directed by Kent Jones and Martin Scorcsese. It made me want to watch On the Waterfront and East of Eden. It was my first time seeing a movie in a film festival. It was really cool because Kent Jones was there and spoke about the film before it and had a Q&A afterward. All the old geezers yelling in the back that they couldn't hear him wasn't so cool, but this is the berkshires... most of the people here have grey hair and a winter house in Florida.

Parting with the city for Summer

Pittsfield, MA. It sounds like a horrible place to live, and sometimes it feels like that, but the truth is it's a bizarre, beautiful town in the middle of the Berkshires (which is this cluster of towns that sit in the north west corner of Massachusetts). There is a vibrant art life here and lots to do and explore which is partly why I'm so happy this is my home for the summer.

I'm working as an associate box office manager at Barrington Stage Company. I really wanted to find summer stock work this year but I'm looking at this time away from the city as an opportunity to practice my audition material and refocus myself, because if the city is good at one thing it's getting people into debt. Not that I'm in a lot of debt right now myself. I just mean that the city is so expensive sometimes it's hard to concentrate on things besides how am I going to make money and how am I not going to spend it.

I'm most excited about being able to see lots of theater probably all for free (I'll get comps from BSC). And there is so much theater to see here it's kind of overwhelming between Berkshire Theater Festival, Williamstown Theater Festival, and Shakespeare and Company. Then there are concerts at Tanglewood and dance performances and classes I can take at Jacob's Pillow. I really want to be inspired by all of the art I'll experience this summer. Hopefully that will help motivate me when I return to New York and start auditioning again. I'm pretty certain it will.