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Lorrie's Story:  Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

When I was seven I sat on behemoth rocks in a small whispering brook in the mountains and sang to the leaves.  They applauded.  Sometimes riotously.  Sometimes softly.  It depended on the mood of the song.  And the leaves.  

My acting roots are slightly sullied.  When I was five I pretended I was a flasher and that I supported myself and my two small children by flashing people on the street for money.  I did well enough to get by and buy food and occasionally to buy new flasher coats for my job.  This was far more fun to me at the time than going to Sunday school.   

(When you were five did you watch ants on your belly in the sun?) 

When I was twelve I had my first plane ride.  We won a competition and went to the world.  We slept in hot bunk beds and sweated and met kids from Japan.  I played a cat in a skit with lots of mice involving an elaborate chain reaction of mousetraps.  I fell in love with planes.

When I was fifteen I had my first professional audition for a movie called Man In The Moon.  It was between me and one other girl.  I was hooked.  

When I was eighteen I went to UNC –Chapel Hill on a vocal scholarship.  I didn’t like it there.  I liked my boyfriend in Charleston, SC more. 

When I was nineteen I went to Vassar College on a scholarship.  I did like it there.  I got to be a mean, conniving maid on a huge stage wearing an almost equally huge hoop skirt.  In another play a large man hid underneath my even bigger hoop skirt and made me giggle in front of my husband.  The audience laughed when the man peeked out from under my skirt and they saw why I was laughing.  Naughty naughty.  In another play I spent the entire first act strapped into an electric shock chair talking to demons.  I did not wear a hoop skirt in that play.  It would not have fit in the chair.  Or with the demons.  Though I suppose they could have hidden under it. 

When I was twenty I pretended I was rich and badass like my classmates and that I was from New York City, not from little ole Columbia, SC.  I went to the Hamptons and drank champagne from fishbowls and played in big houses with beautiful people.  I fooled them.  I fooled myself sometimes. 

(When you were twenty did you hide behind a smokescreen?)

When I was twenty two I emailed often with John Patrick Shanley and he sent me a white horse with a green satin sash to ride on the beach.  I never got to ride it because it was an email horse.  He was a beautiful email horse. 

 When I was twenty three I wrote my first screenplay.  It won awards and was optioned by the first AD on American Beauty.  He liked it.  I liked it.  It’s sitting in my computer thinking right now.  My second screenplay Dagger Child was birthed the same year.  Dagger Child has come out to play this past year and is morphing into something new with the help of award-winning London-based director Smita Bhide.  Dagger Child is excited because it is going to have feet and legs soon.  Then it can dance for you. 

When I stopped counting years I went on a trip in a small RV with a short bald man and his large and fluffy cat named “Mr. Cat.”  Every time he hit the brakes, the cat flew from its perch and hit the back of the front seat.  The bald man laughed hysterically and muttered "poor mr. cat" to himself.  Every time.  It was an adventure.  

When the years were longer I sang for beautiful people in restaurants and smoky clubs.  And for comedian ANT (who is not, in fact, an ant) and for President Obama.  I sang solo and was the white in the Oreo for R-E-S-P-E-C-T at one of the inaugural balls for him in Washington, DC, and wore all of my long fancy dresses that were like my flashing-job coats from when I was five except that they zipped and I didn’t take them off. 

When the years were bright I listened to my dreams and wrote and recorded songs (two CD’s – Bewitched and Maya’s Big Vermilion) and made a show about hidden things.  That show, Maya’s Big Vermilion, drew 500 people and was voted one of “The Top Five Best Concerts” by The State Newspaper two years along with Band of Horses and Tom Petty.  I sang and directed and dressed up like Alice in Wonderland in a vinyl bustier.  We had a pie eating contest, a marionette show, and very big mushrooms. 

When the years were explosive I met a tall Italian man in a small elevator and lived in Italy.  We followed the tennis courts they asked him to come to all over Italy and I did yoga in the grass while he warmed up for his games.  We rode on his motorcycle to small villages on the sea to eat prosciutto, mozzarella, and orechietta made by hand by very old grandmothers who lived in the center of the old city.  We drank dark wine made from black grapes that sucked up all the water they possibly could from the dry earth.  I made little sculptures out of foil chocolate wrappers for my boyfriend’s uncle Giacomo.  Zio Giacomo keeps them on his dresser.  I would marry zio Giacomo if he were twenty years younger.  Even though I don’t speak Italian and he doesn’t speak English. 

(When you were in Italy did kisses make you forget words and breathing?)

When the years were shorter I was accepted to a Masters acting program at Central School of Speech and Drama.  Central is in London, which is very rainy.  The names of other people who went to the school before me were engraved on the steps.  I lost my breath the first day I walked on the steps that said “Lawrence Olivier” and “Kristen Scott Thomas” and “Gael Garcia Bernal” and “Judi Dench.”  I loved loved loved loved every person and every day and I sweated and worked and loved.  Did I say I loved?  I loved.  I graduated in 2010 with a distinction and can speak with a British accent.  The buses in London breathe.  They have British accents as well. 

When the years were now, I had a dream that I bought a ukulele in a second hand store and wrote songs all night.  I did the same in real life.  The ukulele's name is Madeleine (she told me so) and the songs will swim to you soon in a new album.  Madeleine and I met in LA, where I moved after London:

LA:  Hey Lorrie!  Want to come and play?

Lorrie:  Yes!!!  I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that question for years! 

LA:  Awwwwwesome, dude.  Well…come on out!  What are you waiting for?  We can play all those games you’ve played and more! 

Lorrie:  I’m there! 

 

Management:   

M. Dal Walton, III
Invalesco Entertainment
Phone: (949) 342-5325
Email: InvalescoEnt@gmail.com