Thursday, December 24, 2015

The Walk



I recently saw the movie "The Walk" about Phillipe Petit, who tightrope-walked between the Twin Towers in the 1970s. It inspired this movie!

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

A New Doctor?



Check out my latest movie, a Doctor Who episode starring my friends Zoe and Phoebe...oh and me too and my dad!

 Don't forget to watch the outtakes. Watch to the end to see the trash can incident!

 

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Fawntastic Fawnbook

Photo by Stefano Giovannini

Over the last few months, I have been really busy rehearsing for, and then performing in, an off-Broadway show called Fawnbook! The show was written by Ayun Halliday (who was also in the cast) and directed by Jean Michele Gregory and it ran for 10 sold out performances at the The Brick Theater in Brooklyn. It was so much fun and I learned a ton working with six other really experienced actors.

Fawnbook is a post-digital, pre-apocalyptic dark comedy about a small agrarian community made up of three women and three teen boys. Together they dig vegetables, spot fawns, and deal with the mounting disasters of their world. All the dialogue from the play comes from social media. "Like!" 

Photo by Schecter Lee
Photo by Schecter Lee
Photo by Schecter Lee
This was us in a Brooklyn newspaper!

 

 And during one performance, artists were invited to sketch us. Here I am!
  

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

The Cherry Orchard



Last month, we made a movie with my grandparents and my aunt, uncle, and cousins. Here is our adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard." We shot the whole thing in one day! It was a lot of fun and a lot of laughs - make sure to check out the outtakes too.


Thursday, August 20, 2015

Behind the Scenes on my Movie Shoot



I have been doing a really amazing film class over the last year with my fabulous teacher, Carlo Mirabella-Davis. With my classmate Leo, we have been learning all the fundamentals of film-making and film language. As part of the class, we both created and wrote a screenplay for a short film and in June we shot my movie on location in NY. Leo was my DP (director of photography) and I was the director. It was an amazing experience and I was so grateful that some actor friends of mine agreed to take part. Thanks so much to Jack Warren, Dante Kanter, Daniel Zuzworsky, Ayun Halliday, and Robert Warren. Here are some photos from the shoot. The movie is now in post-production and will be released (we hope) in the next few months.









Saturday, August 15, 2015

How to Build a Lego Tardis!



Check out my latest Lego "How to" video! This one is how to build Dr Who's TARDIS.
And here are some of my older "How to" videos:





Monday, August 3, 2015

A Gentleman from Verona

I just finished my fifth Shakespeare summer camp with New Genesis Productions. This year I played Proteus, one of the two gents in Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. It was great to play a lead role and Proteus is a fun and challenging part to play. One minute he loves his fair Julia and then the next minute he falls in love with Silvia, his best friend's girl!



Thursday, July 23, 2015

"I Went to the Woods..."



In our most recent homeschool History, Religion, and Culture studies, we have been studying the American Transcendentalists. Highlights have included reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden and then visiting the site of his cabin on Walden Pond in Concord, MA. We also visited Ralph Waldo Emerson's and Louisa May Alcott's house on the same "Transcendentalist" trip! (see photos below).

Here are a list of books and essays we read and documentaries and films we watched:

Henry David Thoreau, Walden
John Porcellino, Thoreau at Walden (an excellent graphic novel)
D.B. Johnson, Henry Builds a Cabin
D.B. Johnson, Henry Hikes to Fitchburg
D.B. Johnson, Henry's Night
D.B. Johnson, Henry Climbs a Mountain
D.B. Johnson, Henry Works

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Circles"
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Over Soul"
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Louisa May Alcott, "Transcendental Wild Oats"

Elizabeth Peabody and Amos Bronson Alcott, "A Controversial Experiment in Progressive Education"
Margaret Fuller, "The Great Lawsuit"
George Ripley, "Brook Farm's Consitution"

Movies and documentaries:

Little Women (dir. Gillian Armstrong, 1994)
The Woman Behind Little Women (PBS, 2009)
Emerson: The Ideal in America (dir. David Beardsley, 2007)


Photos from our Transcendentalist tour of Concord, MA

Me and Emeron...






In Walden's cabin (or at least, inside a reproduction of his cabin!)


Emerson's study...

Rumi came for the Transcendentalist trip!


Inside Bronson Alcott's study at Fruitlands, the utopian community he founded and where he lived with his wife and kids, including Louisa May


Our pictures of Fruitlands!


Wednesday, July 1, 2015

The Best of all Possible Operas


I was just in a really great production of Leonard Bernstein's Candide with my Grandad, GG, and my mum. All three of us sung in the chorus, and I also played a pirate and a king. We performed the operetta at St John's Episcopal Church in Yonkers, NY. The music was pretty complex and we had to learn how to sing in harmony, which was a first for me! Here is an article that Jojo wrote about the production at the Huffington Post.

Thank you to Katherine Bourbeau for the photos.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland


Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau

Last weekend, I was in my first off Broadway show - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Firebird Youth Theater. The show was produced, directed, and acted entirely by homeschooled teens. I played the Dodo, Pat the gardener, and the King of Hearts. We played 5 shows to sold out audiences and we got rave reviews from everyone who saw the production! Thanks to Katherine Bourbeau for these amazing photos! 

My mum wrote an article about the show for Huffington Post. See here.

Here's the cast and crew!

Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
 And our amazing 15 year old director, Leo Lion
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
Photo: Katherine Bourbeau
And here I am post-show with my alter ego, the Dodo!