Ha! At least you know that they're all crazy! Sorry, it just seems like with every twist, my mouth is wide open in disbelief. It's interesting to see that it's all coming full-circle, and now they DO want you to be a contractor, which is what you had originally wanted, and what they seemed to react oddly to, right? Sigh... I guess the world works in weird ways!

I have no idea what to make of the idea of keeping you in stealth mode, and hiding you from their parent company, especially when they were trying to sell you on the opportunities to move up into the parent company! It sounds like they really, truly don't have a clue what they're doing.

I hope the contract comes in as expected with no surprises! After all this craziness, wouldn't THAT be a nice surprise in and of itself?!?!

Yeah, I'm not sure how people become directors either. I think I've seen a random class here or there offered re: film directing, but I think those might focus more on how to frame shots, rather than how to get great performances from people.

We did this one exercise where... we had small "contentless" scenes (i.e. things like, "Did you get it?"; "Yeah, I got it right here!"; "Was it hard?" ; "It wasn't that bad..." - we had to work with a partner to determine what the scene was about). Anyway, we'd do our scene for the class... and he'd be able to pinpoint what the subtext was, and summarize it in a sentence. Then, he'd have us do it again (these were really short, about 8 lines total) - but adding the subtext as an extra line after every line we said.

It sounds crazy, but it made such a huge, visible difference! It was really amazing.

So, in my "did you get it" scene - my subtext was really easy and clear ("Give it to me!") - because I wanted to... um, well the potion that my arch-rival witch had. Her subtext was, "Whose the better witch?" - because she wanted me to finally admit that she was a better witch than me (yes, it was lots of fun!)

So, I'd say, "Did you get it? Give it to me!", and she'd say, "Yes, I've got it right here! Who's the better witch?" - seriously, you'd be amazed at how much more energy and clarity and purpose people have when you have to articulate the subtext.

Then we did the scene one last time, as it was written, but trying to keep the energy from that second run.

It really blows my mind how much of a difference it made - and we were just little baby beginner actors who didn't know anything So fun!

And, yeah, the opera stuff was great! What was really funny was... working on my piano teacher's production, I must have said something to his wife at some point about how much fun they seemed to be having on stage... so she (she who wrote all the story/lyrics) said with *great* enthusiasm... "OMG! Do you want to be on stage? I can write you a part!" *lol*. I reminded her that I can't sing... and she told me it would be a non-singing, non-speaking walk-on role.

So cool! But given my untame-able hair and non-existant enthusiasm for serious makeup application, ya know... I had to say no. BUT, it did remind me that... if there's something you want to be doing, you should try to get NEAR it - because just by being there, opportunities will present themselves that you otherwise wouldn't get. At my boring office job, nobody will ever offer me the chance to walk-on stage in an opera! I'd be willing to put money on that!

Anyway! Congratulations (?) - since it sounds like you'll be getting the part-time contracting job that you wanted! That part sounds so wonderful... I'd really love to find a way to work 3 days a week, and support myself on that - and spend more time on fun stuff, like writing and music and theater and life!