"It's the metal......"

Hello everyone.
It has been a very, very long time.

3 months actually.
A lot of things have happened in these past few months.
Lots of stupid fun times with all my friends during the Chrismakuh break.
Lots of wonderful plays have been produced and watched.

Including the NOLA Project's Almost an Evening.
We opened two weekends ago and have been having great houses and responses.
And as A.J. so lovingly told me last night...the two shows the company has produced that ended up in the black were the two shows I have been a part of.
So Yeah.
Can't kick me out of the company just yet, fellas.

I've also started re-rehearsing for The Night of the Iguana because it did indeed get moved on to the second round of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre festival.
Which is a lovely honor, and I'm so happy for Beau because his show was quite stunning.
It is just a whole fuck ton of work to remount a show that you did 10 months ago.
And a show that is so intense and line heavy and just a lot of investment for the people involved.
But, it's trucking along nicely.
And we've got six whole days left before we perform it in front of an audience...
We should be so golden.........

We take Iguana to Amarillo at the end of the month.
I can't wait to go there.
I can't really admit that I am excited about going to Texas, but I am.
It's going to be a week of nothing but theatre.
No work, no school, no stress about anything.
Just watching plays and doing plays and scenes and drinking some Rolling Rock.
I cannot wait.

The other major thing that has occurred over these past few months has been something that happened just this past weekend.

And this is where my blog entry takes a turn for the worst.
I apologize.
I just need to get some stuff out of my head.

Michael Tramontin passed away on January 29th.

I have had the amazing pleasure of being friends with MIchael since I was about 13 years old.
He is one of my oldest and dearest friends that I have.
We did tons of shows together in high school.
He and Keith were basically my other brothers.
We were a very inseparable trio.
He was one of the funniest guys I had ever met doing shows at Rummel and we immediately became friends.
I would just laugh hyterically watching him and Keith doing things up on stage, or sitting in the audience next to him.

One of my favorite things we did together at Rummel was the Christmas show our senior year.
We had a lot of amazing sketches we wrote including a Back to the Future sketch, complete with original theme song.
But my absolute favorite thing we did together that year was a Scooby Doo sketch.
I was playing Velma, obviously, and we were searching for the Phantom of the Opera....
And the all of a sudden we found him, being played by Michael, and we just proceeded to sing Phantom.
It was so weird and random and hilarious and the only reason we did it was because we both really wanted to sing that song.
So we wrote an entire sketch around it.
And it was pretty brilliant.

We all graduated high school and Michael went off to AMDA in New York.
I was very sad because he was one of my best friends and I'm very selfish, I like everyone where I can see them.
That summer he came back in to town and we did a Rummel Alumni production of Rumors.
Michael and I played Lenny and Claire Ganz.
We were a ridiculous married couple.
Best on stage hubby I could have ever asked for.
My favorite thing from this show was when Michael is doing this huge two page mono loge at the end of the play...trying to sum up the entire play...he is running down the staircase and he trips over the last step and kind of rips the front off the bottom step.
THat happens, and as we all know, I can't keep a straight face on stage, so I immediately start laughing.
Michael runs back up the stairs and this time when he comes down the stairs he jumps over the last step and everyone on stage just lost their shit.
And everyone in the audience was going pretty nuts.

The next summer we did Hayfever together and played Sorel and Simon Bliss and that pretty much solidified our brother/sister bond.
We had always called each other brother and sister, and the show just made us constantly do it in a british accent.
We were strange kids, what can I say.
I still am.

Michael finished up at AMDA and came back down to New Orleans.
At the time he was getting back in to town we were having auditions for Cabaret and JPAS.
And I knew that the director needed to see some more guys for the show so I convinced MIchael to go to the call backs with me and just sing for Kris.
He sang for a Kit Kat Boy and got cast as the Emcee.
I was so happy and proud of him.
I knew how fucking amazing he was and now all of NOLA theatre was going to realize it too.
The show was, to this day, one of the most fun theatrical experience I have ever been a part of.
I have never felt more of a rock star in all my days....but it was nothing but theatre and having a good time.
And we had a really, really good time.

Then MIchael was asked to be in The Buddy Holly musical we were doing, and play Ritchie Valens.
The show was ridiculous to begin with, and Michael took that role and ran with it.
He would limbo on stage, and every night he would just say the most random things in a terrible latino accent.
The absolute best was on the closing night, the night we taped, so thank christ it is on film, right before he starts singing La Bamba he just says into the microphone "I HAVE SALSA RUNNING THROUGH MY VEINS!"
And everyone lost their minds.

I have so many other amazing stories from other shows that we did before and after that.
But its just too many to share.
I think you get the picture of the type of person he was.
He was simply awesome.
And even though he hadn't been living here for the past couple of years, just sporadically visiting, we still talked at least once a week.
And he always sent me text photos of things he thought I would think were funny or things that reminded him of me.
And I did the same for him.

I have never had a person this close to me die.
When you are as young as we are you don't think your friends are going to go to sleep and just not wake up.
You never, ever think that.
So when I got the news last weekend I was completely devestated.
I still am completely devestated.
I am overwhelmed with sadness.

It's a strange hurt losing a friend.
You kind of just expect family members to pass away.
It's weird, but true.
Not any less painful, but expected.
At least for me.
It is so much harder for me with this because family you are given.
My friends, I pick.
And I pick very carefully.
Let's be honest....I don't like that many people.
And I chose Michael a long time ago.
And I wanted him around for a long, long time.
I always said at my wedding I wouldn't have bridesmaids...I'd have brides men because I have this wonderful male support system in my life.
And now I'm gonna be one short.
And I am just so very sad about it.

I love him so very much.
And he will always be my brother from another mother.
I will miss him every single day.
And I will never look at salsa without getting a little teary eyed.