Ashley Wool - "Suspended in Time" from Xanadu
My stint as an artist-in-residence at the @WhitePlainsPAC conservatory program led me to my all-time favorite role, Kira/Clio in Xanadu. Some fun facts:
-This video is too far away to truly appreciate it, but the design team put together an ingenious Pegasus at the last minute (after some more high-tech plans fell through). I'm straddling one of those mesh white-light reindeer lawn decorations that you put out at Christmas time, except with a Lady Gaga wig as the mane. And it's being pulled along on a small rolling platform.
-Shortly after rehearsals started, I cut my heel and injured my Achilles tendon (a body part which, incidentally, becomes a plot point in the show involving the Greek mythology that its name derives from). My character is on roller skates for most of the show, and I had never roller skated in my life...and thanks to this injury, I only had about two weeks to learn instead of the six-ish I was hoping for! I pulled it off, but let's just say nobody should do this show without insurance!
-Almost nobody else in the cast had roller-skated before either. Check out the finale and you'll probably be able to guess who the experienced skaters are:
https://youtu.be/q0FbT8GnFcs
-I played Kira again a little over a year later with a fledgling community theatre company that did not yet have an established home venue. The stage we played on was maybe a third as large, and really not a good place to be doing anything on wheels...but we had fun anyway, and I went on to perform in a bunch more shows with them as the group expanded.
-There are clips of this second show on YouTube (no I'm not saying where, unless enough of you ask), and a comment on one of the videos (which has since been deleted) described me as "the poor man's Kerry Butler" and I think that's my brand now.
