A work-out and a shout-out

Oh my God.

After a three year hiatus I decided tonight was the night to return to Pilates. My personal favorite of all workout and strengthening techniques.

Junior year of acting school we had a new movement teacher and the first hour of our three hour lab class with him was a vigorous and regular Pilates mat based work out. At first, I hated it...and him. I thought terrible thoughts about my movement teacher and the new head of the department who brought him in. "Devil's Spawn," I thought, "what kind of self-degrading torture is this?" and then three weeks went by, and then four, and by the end of the semester the work out was just a warm up and my body was in great shape. And I hadn't even realized it! Then we moved on, and didn't have that movement teacher again. No more weekly Pilates. No more "Pilates Body".

Since graduating from college I haven't been making the time to regularly work out in any meaningful way, and though I've maintained a "desirable" weight I am most definitely out of shape. So tonight I thought "It's time, I need a pick me up, and I like Pilates, and I currently have no rehearsals going on, so why not." And I had a great work out. The next step is getting out of bed tomorrow...I'll keep y'all updated on how that goes.

Also a shout out to some good friends and great performers - go see Carny Knowledge currently running at the Cambridge YMCA.

It's being put on by a small local group Fort Point Theatre Channel who are definitely working the edges of the "guerilla theatre" movement. They work in odd and non-traditional spaces and or with material focused on the darker parts of the psyche and taboo phenomena...as well as flash performances of classic American plays. William Saroyan's the Time of Your Life was produced at the bar Lucky's Lounge in the fall of 2008 - the playwright set the play in a bar....yours truly played a sassy hooker. And another short play/mixed media event Gods Monsters and Others focused on different types of sexual perversion.

The performances in Carny are solid for the most part, the plays, gathered from national entries, are a window into a world we often write off as non-theatre, and the side-shows scattered through the space include a contortionist, a tarot card reader, jugglers, a glass walker, and a straight jacket escape artist. It's not perfect, but it is a spectacle worth seeing. Get your freak on and head over to the Cambridge Y this Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening.