Holy cow! Chicago Reader is pouring on the love this Halloween for Audience Annihilated 3: The Trouble With Angels!

Not only are we "Reader Recommended", we also made their list of The 10 Best Things to Do This Halloween!

We return tomorrow night. I won't be performing on Wednesday, but will be back on stage for the Thursday-Sunday performances. Reserve tickets now, Angel/Lead tickets are going fast!!

Full text review after the break:

Awesome opening weekend of Audience Annihilated 3: The Trouble with Angels -and we're HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by NewCity Stage! It's so much fun terrifying audiences - I only hope I can get the fake blood out of my clothes :) See below the break for the full text review.

Other recent developments:

Colee Wong, friend and former coworker, asked Amanda and her fiancé Jonah to appear in her team's entry into the Doritos Commercial Contest. We were tickled to appear as a young couple falling in love over our shared passion for Doritos. It was a ton of fun of fun to shoot, and thanks to Leo, our DP, and Max, who filled in as the sound engineer. Now we have a bunch of leftover Doritos to eat...

Also, Amanda's 1st appearance in the #SelfieGuy series is now on the Media - Film Shorts page. She'll be shooting another #SelfieGuy video in November, and will appear in at least on more after that. This is a fun goofy group, and I hope to work with these guys more in the future. 

More news to come!

Ah, October. One of my favorite times of year. I'm a summer lover, but fall has it's merits. Crisp days and changing leaves, pumpkin flavored everything, and of course....HALLOWEEN! My actor friends and I often joke that Halloween is "Actor Christmas" because we can go all out in crazy costumes, and everyone else is along for the ride too. Not to mention, many of us get the chance to scare the pants off our friends by working in various incarnations of haunted houses, horror shows, and so on. 

This will mark my 3rd year performing in the Audience Annihilated series with Dream Theatre Company. For the uninitiated, Audience Annihilated is a part-haunted house, part-horror play that blurs the lines between audience and actor. Audience members have the option of playing the "lead" and interacting directly with the actors, or if you're too scared, you can watch from the safety of the gallery. This year we're performing "The Trouble with Angels", another original concept by Jeremy Menekseoglu. More info and tickets on my Current Projects page.  I'm super excited for this one, as it touches on a lot of my personal fears, we've expanded the cast, and tickets are already selling fast. It's 1/2 the price of most haunted houses, and arguably a lot scarier - definitely check it out of you're a horror fan! Reservations are required due to the intimate nature of the performances.

I'll have to switch gears next week - as I start rehearsing for It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play with Oil Lamp Theater in Glenview. Definitely a much more cheerful show ;) This will be a fun one for me, as I've worked with all but 1 member of the cast before, and they're an amazing bunch of people. Tickets are on sale now, and OLT now offers reserved seating!

On a more personal note, October has also been quite dreamy, as on October 7th, my 7 year anniversary with my significant other Jonah, something pretty exciting happened.....we got engaged! In true theatrical fashion, he surprised me at a callback audition at Oil Lamp Theater, and even conspired with the theater director and some of the staff to pull it off. We're both super excited, and have planned a vacation to celebrate in January at Universal Studios Orlando (let's be honest, we're 90% going for Harry Potter World).  I will be changing my name to Amanda Winston. Name changing is always an odd-thing in the actor world, as your name is your "brand". However, I think that Amanda Winston has a more unique ring to it than Amanda Meyer, and I won't need to carry my middle name to stand out for the 1,000's of Amanda Meyer's out there (there are tons of us....one was a math teach at my high school). While I have started to make a name for myself in the acting world, I don't think my brand will suffer much from making the switch to Amanda Winston. My inner feminist wants to say "you don't need to take his name", but what can I say, I like the name Winston! 

Have a Happy Halloween everyone, and I hope to see you at the theatre!