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Category: Humor

Keeping Our Shit Together

Published May 30, 2013

“And I thought, well, Cheryl’s someone who has her shit together!” This was a statement uttered by a mentee of mine when kicking off a conversation a few weeks ago. And though it was meant as a compliment, my brain rebooted in a moment of cognitive dissonance. “You really have your shit together.” Why do people say this as a compliment? It’s often uttered in reverent, respectful tones. It is An Accomplishment to have one’s shit together. Usually career-related in some way. But why on earth is such a phrase aspirational? Where does it come from? It implies that, at…

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Grrrrrrl, Uninterrupted

Published April 3, 2013

Soon I’ll be marking my 5-year anniversary as an ensemble member with Unexpected Productions. It’s been quite a journey – when I started, I couldn’t imagine ever holding a candle to the veteran performers with decades of experience with the troupe. My first improv training, as it was, came in the form of peer workshops with the No Parking Players, a student-run improv troupe at Carnegie Mellon University. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for those early days, but that’s another story. CMU, particularly at the time, tended to skew rather male, and improv in particular didn’t…

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Hair Warfare

Published January 31, 2013

During the month of January, four different gentlemen made comments about having difficulty recognizing me due to my varying hairstyles. “I was looking for you from the back of the theatre but since your hair is always different I couldn’t find you.” “When we continue meetings over multiple days, it would help if everyone wore the same clothes. And those of you with different hairstyles refrained from changing them. Oh, I guess that’s just Cheryl.” The great irony to me is that my hair changes far less drastically than many. I’ve never even dyed my hair. (It was red for…

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Delusions of Glamour

Published August 13, 2012

Last night, an audience member approached me in our theatre’s lobby after my performance in TheatreSports. “Hey there… you see my husband standing over there?” [She indicated a tall bald man leaning on a railing across the room.] “He said you really remind him of Molly Shannon. I told him he should tell you, but he was too embarrassed because he wasn’t sure you’d think it was a compliment.” I most happily accepted the compliment and thanked her for sharing the thought. But this begs the question – why *wouldn’t* I want to be compared to a woman who spent…

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Soliloquy of a Graduate Student

Published August 5, 2011

I opened Pandora’s box today. While idling in traffic, curiosity struck me out of the blue. I’ve been keeping online journals since 1997, give or take, stretched across 4 or so sites. Would any still be active? The answer: my undergrad journal is no longer with us, but my grad school journal DOES exist, on the public internet (if you know where to find it, and no I’m not telling). You wouldn’t want to read it anyway – I had forgotten how painfully emo I was when dealing with the stress of grad school and my clinical depression. However, THIS…

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