Second theatrical audition of the year + first time in to casting office UDK + reading for two reporter roles = cast in season one episode eight of Ryan Murphy’s new first responder drama “9-1-1” on FOX. Less than twenty-four hours after my audition, I was on location filming on Valentine’s Day. Wardrobe, makeup, hair, eating Chinese food with David Bowie over the loudspeakers surrounded by a gorgeous mountain range, meeting the coolest Aisha Hinds, hanging out in my trailer, seeing a rain machine at work, and filming my scene with a giant crowd of background actors = grateful, lucky, happy. The episode aired this Wednesday 3/7 at 9 PM; catch it now on Fox.com or Hulu.

On December 9th, I played a donuts-obsessed member of a support group for those afflicted with limerence in Huge creator and Nashville scribe Savannah Dooley’s play Lovesick for Gina Young’s SORORITY at the Lyric-Hyperion Theater in Silverlake. Sarcasm and eating donuts on stage: my dream job.

Dana Patrick on camera and Rachel Stolte on hair and makeup are my dream team.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This past weekend, I got to bask for the second time in the particular glory that is Gina Young’s Feminist Acting Class. Gina teaches a three day workshop focusing on texts and roles for women and by women and gender non-conforming folks that involves multi-layered conversation on the political acts potentially embedded in performance art. How refreshing to be in an environment that questions the very nature of how acting is often cultivated and how actresses are regularly (mis)treated. And what a pleasure to work on some newer scripts, and to do this all with a group of badass feminists coming from various industry disciplines. Did a black cat wander in from the road into the Women’s Center for Creative Work halfway through a circle-up in which we affirmed our magic? Yes, it did. And came back the very next day.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of performing with a couple of kettlebells in Gina Young’s SORORITY, described as a “performance k-hole evoking the New York City art scene of the 80s and 90s” “centering the work of women, trans and queer performers,” which is “a space for experimental works-in-progress, script-in-hand readings, theatrical situations and vulnerable solo work. It’s a wild, intellectual party that attracts lines out the door.” This special edition coinciding with National Coming Out Day was produced for the Los Angeles Exchange (LAX) Festival at the Bootleg Theater, and featured a broad spectrum of LGBTQIAAP2S performers and the best Christina Aguilera retrospective dance party you could imagine.

This morning, my screenwriting partner Tim Youker and I got great news: our one hour drama pilot script “Untouched” is a top three finalist in the Stanford Alumni in Entertainment Television Pilot Screenwriting Contest. We find out later this month if we won, with industry table read to follow. Fingers crossed for all our fictional motley crew!

Hollywood Fringe Festival, here we come with our all-female cast and our experimental production of Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” reimagined as a high-stakes card game and crafted for the picnic benches of the Hollywood Rec Center by wunderkind director Anne Brashier.  I’ll be playing Overdone, Isabella, Claudio AND Angelo, as will the rest of the cast, and you, dear audience, will be Juliet.  Tickets are free and we’d love you to donate to Planned Parenthood.

Recently I attended a branding and marketing workshop at SAG-AFTRA where a group of twenty strangers were tasked with qualifying each other via a sheet of adjectives exhumed from what I can only imagine was a casting office in 1991.  Our facilitator was quick to insist these results would be paramount; I found our options, laced with misogyny and ethnocentrism, to be staggering.  Letter I’ll be writing to the union aside, the feedback I got from the group was in many cases to be expected.  Sure, I’m confident, mature, assertive, intelligent, outgoing.  Sure, I could play a wife, mom, leader; a college professor, attorney, therapist, flight attendant.  Other responses were proof positive that no, group think doesn’t always have the same conclusion: I look European/I look Midwestern.  I look upscale/I look natural.  To the three men who wrote in that I remind them of Uma Thurman, thank you, but I’m pretty sure you were just already thinking about Uma Thurman.  To sum it all up in a sentence, I’d say I am a confident, intelligent wife and mom who can play a professor or therapist.  I’m pretty sure the translation is I believably take care of men.  1991 casting adjective sheet, we need to get you back in class.

Roller derby all star and my CrossFit buddy Micki Krimmel created body positive size-inclusive fitness wear company Superfit Hero, as seen on Project Runway. Her clothes are made locally in a fair wage factory under safe working conditions with high quality materials, and they’re the best gear on the market. When she asked me to model for some promos, I jumped (and squatted and kipping pull-upped) at the chance.  Here’s “Audrey Goes to CrossFit” and “Audrey Goes Running.”  (For you WOD geeks, that’s a 44 pound kettlebell and an 85 pound clean.)

When a down-on-his-luck orange monster named Sig gets a shot at running a radio station, he makes some interesting hires.  Including the nihilist feminist Fawn, voiced and written by yours truly, who hosts the show “It’s All Going to Hell, Anyways.”  Watch all of the episodes here, or cut right to spotlight on Fawn in the finale.