Star struck

I'm a little hesitant to post anything because sometimes it seems like the longer I leave a topic alone, the more conversation it percolates. But I have to break away from the whole audition discussion to say that I had the occasion today to talk briefly with former Richmond resident Emily Skinner. Emily, who forevermore will have the moniker "Tony Award-nominated actress" attached to her name (at least until it changes into "Tony Award-winning" or "Grammy Award-winning" or some other such upgrade), is teaching a Master Class at SPARC today and tomorrow for the lucky cast of "West Side Story." Between Emily's visit and Caridad Svich working with New Voices I'd have to say that SPARC is really delivering the goods this summer. And that's not even mentioning their new building which is pretty awesome with scads of potential.

(Full disclosure: I didn't know who Svich was until I looked her up on her website. Then I remembered "Any Place But Here" and "Prodigal Kiss" and a couple other of her works.)

Anyway, I don't think I'd seen Emily since I was handing her props backstage during the original production of "Quilters" when she was about 16. And even though that was more than 20 years ago and there's been scads of water under the bridge since then, I was still a little star struck. I mean, I was a little star struck back when she was 16 and that was before the Tony nomination and the success in all sorts of productions since. I can report that Emily is still gorgeous and was very sweet and personable in our short chat. I think there are some very lucky SPARC kids who were probably a little star struck today as well.

And one final word on SPARC: as many of you have undoubtedly heard, one of SPARC's most valued employees, Ms. Erin Thomas-Foley, had her sweet little baby back on July 5th (for a cute picture, check out the muffinface blog). Congrats to Erin and Tony, Sophia looks like a little angel (and like a potential Tony Award nominee -- she's certainly got the genes!).