ONE NIGHT ONLY!

June 14, 2008


So the "Spirit of a Woman" event was last night and I'm still reeling from the excitement of it. It was amazing to be a part of a cast of such beautiful and talented women, and what's more is that we all fully supported each other with positivity and genuine respect. Shelli Boone did a fantastic job putting the show together, and we've already talked about making it an annual event. I feel so blessed to have met a network of positive, gifted women, especially when I'd been told that the L.A. acting community was just the opposite. Here's a photo taken by the lovely Vanoy Burnough, of me and Kim Chillous getting ready for the show:



Now, I'm looking forward to next week's world premiere of "Prince of Broadway." If you're around this Sunday night, June 22nd, you can buy your tickets online at www.lafilmfest.com

Thanks!

And, I had to post this because this is the first review ever written about my "Beauty Queen" monologue, which I performed last night. Take a look!

In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, there’s a scene in the library where the prisoners are opening a large shipment of book cartons. The books were ordered by lead character Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), in his effort to improve the literacy of the men. One character, Heywood (William Sadler), stares quizzically at the cover of one of the new books, The Three Musketeers. “Hey Andy,” he asks innocently, “who’s Alexander Dumbass?”

The line is so typical (stereotypical) of what we would expect a backwoods inmate to say that we laugh uproariously—and miss the point of what’s going on: Andy, who realizes these men are no dumb-asses, is trying to help them realize it, too.

Last night, I was privileged to watch Brea Cola present a monologue which she had written entitled, “The Beauty Queen.” The setting is a job interview, and she is asked what she believes to be her greatest weakness. The question takes her by surprise for a moment, as her answer does us, for a minute or so: “my smile.” The answer is puzzling and seems totally off-the-wall until we realize she is wrestling with the irony of her own realization that she has given so much attention to what she once thought to be her greatest asset. Her sudden, frustrated statement of her own “dumb-assity” (“dumb-assedness” ?) is right on. It reflects the realization that she had fallen into what many (most?) people in “civilized” culture pursue: reliance on an external, rather than internal, beauty.

One of the most beautiful aspects of this whole performance is the fact that Brea wrote it. When she first stands on stage and begins to answer the “human resource” person’s question, you wonder where this is going. The girl seems like a clueless idiot, sort of like your first impression of Elle Wood (Reese Witherspoon), in the film Legally Blond, as she applies for Harvard. You’re frankly not sure, at first, if this is great character portrayal or amateurish acting. However, as you track with Brea’s character, you realize that it’s the former, and you not only realize that you are witnessing, not simply great character portrayal, but great character writing based on great character insight and great awareness of a massive flaw in human society that has come to rely on the power of appearance and confused same with the power of inner beauty. What’s more (could there be more to praise? yes!) she chose to articulate the point, not in some blunt statement that one may hear, acknowledge, and discard, but in a manner that forces one to think along with her, and, more importantly, even after she has left the stage.

Unfortunately, most people never come to that realization. Fortunately for us, Brea is a young woman who can articulate the problem through her own art and in such a beautiful way that may provoke others to realize the bankruptcy, the foolishness of a true dumb-ass.

--Walt Bertelsen

You can view the NYC performance of the monologue at: www.youtube.com/breacola