 Hey everyone!
So as I announced a couple of weeks back, I've been cast in Ithaca College's Main Stage production of Working by Stephen Schwartz and some others. I will be playing Frank Decker, Conrad Swibel, Charlie Blossom, and a few other characters as well. We've been in rehearsal for three weeks now, and things are going great! We ran Act 1 last night, and have probably 90% of the show blocked! I can't wait to get this thing on its feet, the design team has done an amazing job bringing these characters to life and I really think it's going to be a remarkable production. For tickets, you can visit www.ithacaevents.com or www.ithaca.edu/theatre. The show goes up the last week in March/first week in April and runs for two weekends with a day off on Monday. Tickets are going fast, so pick them up soon!
Hope all is well with everyone, this semester is flying right along and before I know it, I'll be gradumacating and trying to assemble myself in the real world!
Thanks for sticking by me to all who do, your support means more to me than you could possibly know!
~Ned
 It's so interesting watch the creation of "type" in this business. In terms of casting, my casting has been a bit skewed from my type due to my abilities as a Staged Combatant. I find myself getting cast a lot as a bruiser, because I can also choreograph the fight. Through those casting, my resume has pushed me in one direction that my acting style doesn't generally match, and what has been so interesting in the last year, has been to find the happy medium. As I've readapted my "type" I've found myself saying goodbye to things that I have been holding on to. For one, I less and less find myself being considered for the younger roles (Damn that Irish receding hairline) unless it's a charactery role, such as The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and speaking of charactery...I find myself being considered in a charactery way. Between my work on How I Learned to Drive and many callbacks for The 39 Steps, I have found myself working to explore this side of my type but be careful not to eliminate the solid foundation that Ithaca has given me.
Then the honest questions begin. Do I like the type that I'm being made out to be, and if not, how can I change it? What do I need to do to be the person that I want people to see me as. Is there a way? It's hard to know, but it is something fun to explore. Rather than explore type in reverse, I'm finding myself being pulled towards a type that I don't always love, and am really enjoying exploring aspects of myself that I don't like, and could change to be more who I want to be. What I've found is as I become comfortable with these new adaptations of my traits, is that people have started to see me in new types? I've begun to morph between character types and my auditions, callbacks, and castings have been truer to me, and more honest towards what I would like to be seen as.
I'm not a person who believes too much in type. However directors know what they want, and so there will be predetermined "types" for every show that actors go into. What I've loved exploring, is how my type, and my actual personality slide together to to create the kind of person that I truly would like to be seen as.
 I feel like an honest to god person striving to be a professional actor! Every time I've tried to apply for acting positions outside of the theatre world it's always "let me see your reel". Well there's an easy, inherent, catch-22 with that, how on earth do you get a reel if film work won't look at you?! Problem solved. Thanks to Ithaca College film directors such as Joe Killeen, Dave Travers, Mark Renaudin, and Cory Tomascoff, I now have an Acting reel live and online. Thanks to directors such as Jack Denny, Charles Miller, Alex Tragellis, and Garrett Kafchinski, I have a Fight Direction reel live and online. As I prepare to graduate, I'm so thankful to these people (and the countless others who have helped me) for helping me take yet one more step forward toward my goal to live as an actor. Head over to my Videos page to see the videos I speak of, plus an embedded playlist of musical performances I've had recorded. Enjoy! ~Ned
 I'm so sorry boys, but a bet's a bet Well hello there everyone, This is officially the most awkward post I have ever had to do. As some of you know, I am a diehard New England sports fan, especially for the Patriots and Tom Brady. My housemate, John Gardner, is a huge New York sports fan, specifically for Eli Manning and the Giants. Obviously this caused a serious problem for our household. A wager was placed on the outcome of this past sunday's Super Bowl. As you may know if you've looked at a newspaper or seen the news in the last couple of days, my team lost. Not badly, it was actually an amazing game of football. However, I still had to uphold my end of the wager. I would tell you all about it, but I think that ruins how epic this bet truly was. So without further ado, I give you the video of the destruction of my personal honor, and one of the most sickening experiences I've ever had to sit through.
 I'm losing my faith in the educational system. Of course, right now, I am a senior in college at a small liberal arts college, with aspirations of one day going to get a master's degree, I am from the upper middle class, I am white, and I went to a small private school in Portland Maine. In other words, I am considered to be the stereotypical college aged kid, and I am following the system to a t, so therefore I don't really get the authority to criticize it since I am the poster child. Fine, I accept that. However I think my issue with the educational system has to do with everything I hear and understand about the schools that I did not attend. I have been fortunate, unbelievably fortunate in my experiences and opportunities in this world. However every step of the way, I look back at what I received, and then look at what those institutions are giving to the students arriving in my wake, and it is different. Very different. I could get into the specifics, but I love my current school and my old school and I have no interest in being critical of what I am sure were important, and difficult decisions which came from a place of much more experience than I have. Instead I'll talk about what I received, and what I see happening these days. When I was in school, I was given a well-rounded, reason based, education which also focused on introducing kids to athletics, music, art, performance art, as well as various cultures, races, religions, creeds, and ideas. It's entire purpose was about a educationally hands on approach, while still allowing kids the space to utilize their knowledge to make their own discoveries and understandings about life. Instead of being lectured at, we were brought into conversation, and the teachers were skilled in leading conversations to outcomes they intended us to arrive at. What has changed? On the surface, nothing. However what brews under the surface is much more important. I was schooled in school, I took part in extra-curricular activities, and when I was at home I was away. What was important is that I was taught how to think, but rarely taught what to think. I'm now taking a class at Ithaca College called "Social and Cultural Foundations of Education" and I find the class absolutely fascinating. It comes at education from an idealistic place, so that instead of allowing pure cynicism about the faults of the educational system, it uses the negative as opportunities to create more positives. Through the class, and different explorations of aspects of the educational system every week we hope to create a set of standards which school's could adapt to possibly better themselves. However, I'm having trouble believing in them. Here is my issue:
 Sometimes I'm just like Calvin Hey everyone,
Today I am learning a very valuable lesson, making an honest assessment and being okay with the fact that "I can't." Let me back up. Currently I'm enrolled in 9 separate courses, 6 of which have a ton of outside of class work, cast in a major Main Stage musical, hold two jobs, am fight coordinating and starring in a senior Thesis film. Now this is not necessarily new for me, in fact I've taken on more in the past, but this is the most classes I've taken with such a substantial amount of outside of class workload.
With all of these classes, I've made a valuable lesson this morning, which is I can't do everything. Even before the school year has officially kicked off, I'm already ready to have my skull implode, because at least 6 of those things require substantial outside of class work. That on top of my two jobs, and extra-curricular interests have forced my hand. I can either be mediocre in all of them, or I can drop one and successfully do the work for the other five. For the first time in my life I'm swallowing hard and admitting that I can't do it. In the past I've viewed my admitting of this fact as a weakness, but now I'm happy i'm making the choice. Just by dropping one of the courses, I'll have an extra 5 or 6 hours a week to distribute among the rest of the major classes, and managing 5 classes is significantly easier than a full six.
 Whew, the week of auditions is over! It all started this time last week, when the senior BFA Performance majors had to audition for our showcase in May. After spending all of break going over materials, I sang a Michael Bublé song, a duet from Edges with John Gardner, a monlogue from Five Days to Friday by John Patrick, and a scene from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Danny Bristoll. I'm still waiting to hear from the faculty about how they felt those pieces went, however there was no time to breathe, because the next day Main Stage callbacks began. Over the course of the week, whoever auditioned for the shows this semester would trek to Dillingham to find out their callback list for the night, pick up their sides, go to classes, learn their sides, and then later in the evening come back and take part in callbacks until 10 or 11 at night. This happened every night, culminating in the cast lists being posted friday morning. I have been fortunate enough to have been cast in Ithaca College's Main Stage production of Working by Stephen Schwartz as Frank Decker along with a variety of other roles. I'll be getting to sing my favorite song in the show, "Brother Trucker" which is very exciting! Our choreographer, Mary Corsaro, is very excited about this casting because it means she can force me to be an Indianapolis Colts fan, which will take a great deal of acting on my part. Speaking of football, I am gearing up for this weekend! My housemate John (same John from above) is a die hard Giants fan, and the Tom Brady vs. Eli Manning talk is just going crazy right now. We're throwing a super bowl party at our house which will probably culminate in too much beer, too many wings, a very possible game of Fireball Island, and of course one of us heartbroken. I'm banking on him, since I already got my knock around courtesy of the Giants in the Super Bowl. It's their time. Plus Tom Brady is out for vengeance, and Eli Manning is too gooberish to fight back.
 Click to see the Illusion Just a quick post to show you something really cool that came up on my facebook this evening while doing homework. It's a fun little experiment, and thinking about it hurts my brain. The human optical system is so intricate and odd, I wish I understood how this works. If you know, PLEASE post so in the comments!
Instructions:
1.) Click the picture to open a larger version
2.) Focus on the red dot on the girl's nose for 30 seconds or longer
3.) Turn your gaze to a wall/blank surface
4.) Blink rapidly and check out what appears on the wall!
NOTE: Blank surface isn't necessary, just shutting your eyes works, but I think that blinking while staring at the blank surface actually makes it easier to see.
 Click to see the Illusion After posting this post, and having the above picture also up on facebook, I began getting all sorts of these similar ones. So here's the best other one I've received. Check it out. To make the whole picture work, click on it to get a larger image. Stare straight at the center of the picture for the entire run of the GIF video.
 Okay, so today's my last, second day of school. I was lazy last night, and didn't want to blog, so shoot me. But really, it's a very strange feeling that I'm going through right now.
Yesterday I purchased my school books for the last time (in the forseeable future), I went to school, and got my Main Stage callbacks from what is my final audition week at Ithaca College, I received the first of my last syllabi that I will receive from teachers. All of these days keep happening to me. The last _______, or the final _______. It's going to keep happening right up until May 20th, graduation day.
It's at this point that I'm reminded of all my previous first days. I don't remember my first day at Waynflete, back in September of 1992. I wish I remembered those cliche days where my mom sent me off to school with a bag lunch in hand, ready to take on the world. Unfortunately, I've discovered that I have a bad memory of most things prior to 6th grade. I remember faces, names, minor events, snapshots, but there are so many memories that I wish I could get back, but unfortunately I was to young to understand that they mattered.
 You know it's amazing. Everyone I know will tell you, oh lovely reader, that I am a perfectionist. I commit myself to more projects than I feasibly should, and I manage to complete them all at the result of my sanity. (Not to mention the sanity of my girlfriend, thanks for putting up with me Pri!) However I have never quite experienced my amazing ability to throw all things aside to fix a small, minute, remarkably unrecognizable detail, like I have when building this website. It doesn't matter what I'm working on, it will take far too long. I have rewritten my " About" page more times than I care to say, I spent literally 3 hours perfecting my photos page only to discover my friend Danny had done it better, and I learned his amazing ways and promptly threw mine out. I have spent countless hours perfecting every line, every word, every picture, every single place that a picture, a paragraph, and a column didn't match up. After all that, you'd think I'd learn to listen to words of reason, "Ned, the average person, and even the average above-average person won't notice." You'd think, but I don't. Instead here I am. Sitting at my computer at 1:56AM (though by the time I'm done perfecting this blog post, it'll be 4am, most likely) typing a blog post about nothing important. Except that I wanted to. That's enough, right?
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