Encounters: Melinda E., Jeri M., & Aaron R.

I'm trying to leave this Artists' Bloc event we have at Woolly Mammoth (I'm Membership Director, for the former organization, not the latter) as the audience for Woolly's main stage production, Clybourne Park, is leaving; and I run into three theatre professionals/friends whom I've worked with over the years in various capacities, Malinda Ellerman, Jeri Marshall, & Aaron Reeder.

I say I'm trying to leave because I had been saying goodbye's for the previous 10 minutes and finally. But I shouldn't be surprised running into them, I suppose...I mean, that's how much of a community there is in DC, when you've worked in the area for any number of years.

Malinda...I think we might've actually met doing Summer Dinner Theatre at Montgomery College about 7 or 8 years ago. Our paths crossed again in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, when I transferred to UMD as a Dance major; she was a Theatre major.

UMD is also where I happened to meet Jeri, who I worked with a couple of years ago at the Smithsonian's Discovery Theater, which produces and presents "live performances for young audiences" in the DC area. I was Assistant Director for a show she was cast in, Going the Distance, a piece about Jesse Owens and Wilma Glodean Rudolph.

Aaron...I'm not actually sure how we met initially, but we got to work together on what was my last professional theatre gig before I started grad school, Jerry Springer: The Opera, at Studio Theatre, summer of '08.

Aaron has been performing with the Washington National Opera, for a number of season and is currently in their production of Porgy & Bess, which closes this weekend. Jeri is working on something with the Maryland Shakespeare Festival (I believe); and Malinda is performing with the St. Mark's Players in a production of Oliver! coming up in May, where she is playing Nancy.

That's the awesome but sometimes frustrating thing about all the awesome work that's being done in and around this area. There's a lot of it, but only so much time and money one has to go out and support it, particularly the friends and professional acquaintances you make over the years. Can't hurt to try and catch 'em all, though, right?!

(And yes, if you picked up on a Pokemon reference, that was intentional...I'm so ashamed...)

Encounters: Dionne A.

So just when I think I couldn't be farther away from running into someone, I'm in the lobby of the Holiday Inn at Fisherman's Wharf (in San Francisco, and it has a Fan Page if you're on FB), and run into Dionne!!

She's an actor from DC and I just ran into her in a hotel lobby on the West Coast!! Just when you think the world can't get any smaller, right?!

I met her at some theatre event or another in the past several years...the Helen Hayes Awards, I believe. I haven't had the pleasure of working with her, yet, but all in good time. Apparently she was in SF for the day, doing some kind of training workshop. Between the ADHD and the 7 kids I'd been charged with not losing during the course of the trip, I unfortunately heard but didn't listen enough to commit the information to memory.

Although DC's got the 2nd largest theatre scene in the country, right after New York City and only recently before Chicago, it's definitely a small community if you're the type of independent performer who diversifies their income streams by working at various organizations. :-)