The Guardian loves THE HONEYCOMB TRILOGY

The Guardian just named The Honeycomb Trilogy as one of the Top 10 New York theatre experiences of 2015. It is such a treat to see our show short-listed with these amazing productions. Long live House Four!

Misty Copeland's breaking ground

I know Misty Copeland has been getting a lot of press lately for her recent (well-deserved) promotion to American Ballet Theatre.  That's a big deal, a huge deal, but it's not what I'm going to talk about here. What I'm currently clasping my hands in delight over is the fact that Copeland is making her Broadway debut and performing in ON THE TOWN at the Lyric Theater.

It makes sense, really. ON THE TOWN is dance (indeed, ballet) heavy for a musical, and she's a delightful choice for the part. To be fair, she's not really a singer. But does she really need to do everything when she does what she does so very well? (For that matter, do any of us? Could we all just own what we're really good at, and be enough for once?)

But the truly magical thing for me here is that, as an artist, she has bravely thrown herself headlong into a milieu that is not her forte. She didn't say, "Eh, you know what, I'm not really a trained singer. I don't know if I can pull off a Broadway musical. I think I'll pass." What she said, and what she's saying every night that she's out there on that stage, is Yes; let's do this. She's knocking the ball out of the park for what she's there to do, widening her creative reach, and allowing herself to play.

Here's to all of us doing a little more of that.

Last call: Boomerang Theatre Co's crowd-pleasing production of LICKSPITTLES!

A photo posted by @animasolaarts on May 11, 2015 at 8:12pm PDT

It's closing week for Boomerang Theatre Co.'s production of Johnna Adams' crowd-pleasing verse comedy! Get your $15 discount tickets with the promo code BOOM2015. Come play!

LICKSPITTLES Returns: May 1-17 at Teatro Circulo MainStage

Boomerang Theatre Company's production of Johnna Adams' verse comedy Lickspittles, Buttonholers, and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens returns for a limited run May 1-17 at Teatro Circulo MainStage, 64 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue). I'll be back playing the duel roles of the heartbroken Sestine and everyone's favorite royal shopoholic, Empress Josephine. (Check out the press release goodness here.)

It's a heck of a good time. Get your $15 early-bird discount tickets with the promo code BOOM2015. 

Flora & Fauna Report: Spring 2015

Central Park, yesterday afternoon

The vernal equinox has finally hit New York, and not a moment too soon. It was a rough winter. Spring is fresh; it is new. As the pile of snow on the corner subsides, it reminds you to look at the steep pile of clothes that has taken up residence in the corner and address it. Well, maybe it doesn’t do that to you, but it does that to me. There are dusty things in my life that are just taking up space at this point, and all of it needs to go.

Everyone's favorite question these days seems to be, "So, what are you working on right now?" I'll get to the good stuff in a minute, but what I've really been up to is a lot of mental and physical housekeeping. I've been working with a health coach for the last couple of months (one of the perks of my day job), and said health coach has been putting me through my paces in terms of getting my mind-body initiative back on track.

In the last week alone, I’ve been to kickboxing, a Bollywood dance class, a trampoline tabata class, spinning, vinyasa yoga, and Bikram. If you, like me, need a class to get your rear in gear and prefer studios to the gym, I cannot recommend Classpass enough. It has even brought dance back into my day-to-day life, and that alone makes me so damned happy, I hardly have the words to express it.

Trampolines & dance barres! I am five years old.

I’m also on something (not at all) fun called the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) for four weeks. I hesitate to call it a cleanse, because cleanses are trendy. My Celiac diagnosis - an autoimmune disease, for those keeping score at home - was not something I'd equate to dancing after midnight with bottle service in the Meatpacking District. That said, I’ve been experiencing some ongoing health issues, and the AIP is a paleo-heavy elimination diet which serves as a kind of divining rod in terms of determining what foods might be triggering certain adverse body responses (the details of which I will spare you).

At the end of four weeks, we will begin the process of slowly reintroducing certain food groups back into my diet, one at a time, to see how my body responds. In the meantime, I’m off coffee, sugar, alcohol, dairy, nightshades, seeds, nuts, grains, legumes, and gluten (obviously). I’m drinking bone broth and juicing for breakfast, eating sauerkraut voluntarily, and brewing my own kombucha.

This is the closest I'm getting to Seamless.

This would probably not be the month to ask me to dinner. But in four weeks, you may buy me either a coffee or a G&T.

In other (arts-related) news:

• I just wrapped up a three-week on-camera class with casting director James Calleri. Highly recommended.
• I just completed a three-week screenwriting intensive with writer/director Imelda O’Reilly. Also highly recommended.
• I recently started working with renowned dialect and accent coach Amy Stoller, and she is fantastic.
• I'm back in rehearsals with director John Hurley for the stage reprisal of Boomerang Theatre Company’s production of Johnna Adams’ verse play LICKSPITTLES, BUTTONHOLERS, AND DAMNED PERNICIOUS GO-BETWEENS. The first production resulted in my being inducted into the Indie Theater Hall of Fame in 2013. This will be a limited run, so mark your calendars now for May 1-17, 2015.

DEAD SPECIAL CRABS: previews begin November 7

Post by Amy Lee Pearsall.

Theater in the Now: Spotlight On...Amy Lee Pearsall

I just got all chatty on the interwebs! Check out my recent interview on theatre blog Theater in the Now. Among the topics on the table: my upcoming show KING KIRBY, which opens this Friday as part of the Comic Book Theater Festival at The Brick in Brooklyn. It's a great production; come check it out!

Up Next: KING KIRBY

In case you missed the announcement on other forms of social media, my next project will be KING KIRBY as part of the Comic Book Theater Festival at The Brick in June. I am super stoked about it:

Husband-and-wife playwrighting team Fred Van Lente (award-winning, New York Times best selling comics writer of COWBOYS & ALIENS and ACTION PHILOSOPHERS!) and Crystal Skillman (NYIT Award-winning playwright of GEEK, CUT and THE VIGIL) combine their talents with director John Hurley (ACTION PHILOSOPHERS!, LICKSPITTLES, BUTTONHOLERS, AND DAMNED PERNICIOUS GO-BETWEENS and THE VIGIL) to produce the hysterical and heartbreaking story of this titanic figure – how he poured his quintessentially Twentieth Century life into his comics, and the fateful, tragic mistake he made that led the man to obscurity while his creations became known to every person on Earth.

Rehearsals kick off later this week. In the meantime, mark your calendars and check out the Kickstarter campaign!