10 Things I want to know about Deena Marie

Today I asked for blog ideas.  10 questions were submitted.  Here you go:

1.) Why in the world would a talented equity actress make SLC her home?
I took my equity card at the end of 2007.  My goal was to become equity, and to work.  I have managed to do at least two shows a year ever since.  I have gotten great roles.  I have crossed many of my personal dream roles and acting challenges off my bucket list.  I am able to work at the theatres I want to work at.  I work at the theatres that I prefer to see shows at when I want to go to the theatre.  For me, I prefer quality over quantity.  Before I took my card I put in my time with school shows, community theatre, and then shows in what might be called semi-professional theatres for a stipend, for no pay, or for one sum at the very end of the run.  Sustaining that kind of life and work was not what I ever intended for myself.  I have no desire to go back to that.  I am able to be known here and have put in a lot of time building a name, image, and reputation for myself.  If I never got cast, if having a card was a problem for me here, if I wasn't getting the roles I was desiring, well then I'm sure it would be a different story.  But I feel blessed to be here, to be doing the work I want to be doing . Just in a years time I had a great leading role in a Shakespearean production, got to co-create and bring my own writing and ideas to an original show, and now I'm embarking on a one woman play.  I am so grateful.  I can't complain.  I don't believe there is only one place or city to work.  I don't believe NYC is the only place.  I've been there, done that.  I trained there.  I've been back to train since graduating.  I've worked there.  I've lived there.  I'm so glad I did.  I'm so glad it's over.  I prefer life here. 

2.) What makes a home?
Not the walls.  Not the things.  Not the furniture.  Not the objects.  Not the size.  A home to me has everything to do with the people in it, or not.  And the place.  And I mean the place as far as wherever it is you feel "okay".  Wherever you internally feel best.

3.) How is 2013 Deena different than 2012 Deena?
In 2012 I died.  I was reduced to the barest of bones and the darkest of hours.  I experienced and survived more losses than I ever could have dreamed possible.  For the first time, I knew what it felt like to want to leave earth.  Somehow, I came back.  I amazed myself at my ability to recover.  I was bigger than before.  I became in touch with my spiritual path on a deeper level.  Now I am open.  I am far more in tune with my truth.  I am braver than ever.  I'm not afraid to make bold moves and change my life.  I embrace change.  I rely on it, the fact that nothing can last.  Not one thing.  I am better at living in the moment because I know understand that the past and future do not exist.  I no longer live where I lived before.  Literally.  I am no longer with the person I was with before.  I have a new love in my life.  My shaved head has grown back.  My hair is red again.  I am learning to let myself be happy.  To tell myself it's okay.  To let myself experience it, entire.  My life is full of new people, too.  Things are exciting again.  I'm no longer existing, but I'm now living.  I'm learning the power of gratitude.  I'm learning I'm never done learning.  We're all a work in progress and always will be.  I have a new sense that I can trust the universe.  That I belong, that you belong, that we are here at the perfect time in the perfect vessel, perfectly matched and part of a grand design we can't begin to imagine. 

4.) 2008
2008 Deena had long, dyed black hair.  Was making a name for herself in local theatre and all over the place from the YouTube channel she'd just started at the end of 2007.  The press and local features started.  The press and not so local features started.  Things were exciting.  There were new opportunities everywhere I turned.  I tried them all.  They were fresh.  Nothing like the first time. 

5.) 2003
NYC was still part of my story.  So was living downtown in SLC.  So was the wrong boy, although nothing is wrong because everything is a lesson.  I was a baby.  Oh, what a journey there was in store for me!

6.) What would Deena like for 2014?
I have plans.  I can't tell you.  Planning is tricky.  You can have an idea, you can have the intentions but you have to be flexible.  Adaptable.  I know what I'd like, we'll see what 2014 would like for me. 

7.) 2018
I've never been someone who can predict this far out.  I don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow.  It doesn't exist yet.  I can't know the answer to this. 

8.) 2023
No way. 

9.) You once mentioned going back to school, how's that coming?
I decided not to go.  It wasn't right.  My life is all at once or nothing at all, but the right things seem to come to me to guide me where I'm supposed to go next.  The Ford Fiesta Movement came to me right when I thought I might be going to school.  There I was, at an orientation and hardly able to sit still because I needed to go home to pack and prep to be in LA interviewing the American Idol contestants the next day.  As the hours went by my sense that this wasn't the fit for me grew stronger.  I've always been good at recognizing that feeling.  The sense of something being a yes or a no for me.  I didn't see it happening.  It was feeling forced.  I knew this wasn't for me.  I felt like a square peg trying to force myself into a round hole.  I later realized that wanting to go to school right then wasn't truly what I wanted as much as I needed to fill a void.  Something was unsettled.  Unsatisfied.  I needed something else, something new.  I needed to change something.  That all became clear and worked out this year starting in the spring and taking me through this summer.  I know what it was all about.  All I'll say though in regards to school and if I see it in the future is no, I don't.  I know to never say never, but I don't see it happening.  And it doesn't feel like my truth or heart of hearts now. 

10.) If at some point in your life you had been wise enough to put together a time capsule, and you opened it today, what would you hope to find?
I don't feel old enough to be opening a time capsule filled with treasures.  If I live to be an old woman, ask me then.  Right now youth and childhood don't seem far enough away.  I still have access to very vivid and what feels like recent memories of objects.  And I still own the things that would possibly go into the capsule.  My parents have many in their storage unit.  My precious childhood stuffed animals live there.  So do a pair of pink doc martens from high school.  I have my Nintendo systems from the 80's and the 90's.  So...my time capsule is still too fresh to be amazed and surprised by, if that makes sense. 


Thanks for reading,

Deena Marie