The Creative Process of an Actress
Poetry, Stillness, Growth, and the Inner Life
 Perseverance This past year — wow, holy cow. We’re finding our way again! There’s something that moves my heart noticing more kindness, seeing one another in person, and appreciating our human experience in renewed ways as the pandemic continues to fade into the rear-view mirror 🦋 Perseverance feels like the word of the year. For me, it’s been a rapidly shifting kaleidoscope of growth in self-worth, self-advocacy, and self-acceptance. Facing internal patterns that once held me back has been a brave and necessary journey - one I’m learning to acknowledge and celebrate. The quiet payoff is a deeper, steadier sense of self-love 💞 Creative Work & Acting Life This year, I worked on the production team for a Montana-produced version of Hamlet. We built a castle in open ranch fields, filmed in the St. Helena Cathedral, and captured footage in the woods that gave this classic story a fresh, grounded feel. I was cast as Queen Gertrude, and it was a honor to bring her to life. Pick-up shots are scheduled later this year. I continued auditioning - and refining my audition practice. I purchased a camera, borrowed a couple of soft box lights, and built a functional self-tape setup in my garage (with the help of my brother) and found a small space in my home to film during the colder months. Learning to operate my Canon Rebel camera has been daunting task and also a necessary part of creating a more professional, reliable audition workflow. Training remained central this past year. I studied with Josh Pais (Motherless Brooklyn, Joker), who generously shared his process for character creation. Our work focused on scene study, monologues, and exploring deeper energetic layers of spontaneity and creativity. I also completed an eight-week program with BGB Studios and privately coached with Alexandra Wright. Currently, I’m studying improv storytelling with Kevin Casey, a tremendous actor whose background includes clown training in Italy and Turkey.  Film Work & Festivals My short film 🎥 Homestead was officially selected by the Montana International Film Festival, South Dakota Film Festival (where our lead actress received Best Actress), Bozeman Film Festival (First Place Short Film), and most recently the Minnesota Film Festival - my home state! 🎥 Swing is currently on the festival circuit and has been accepted at nine festivals. The film has received three Best Actress nominations for my performance, along with nominations for Best Director, Best International Featurette, Best Cinematography, Best Original Music Score, Best Featurette, Best Screenplay Short Film, and the Juan Anchia Award for Best Cinematography. We’re grateful to be sharing this work. If you’re in Cheyenne, Wyoming the first weekend of July 2023, I hope you’ll come see it. Filming also wrapped last year on 🎥 They Don’t Leave, which received a Big Sky Film Grant from the Montana Film Office. Whilst I was in London last month, I attended a pre-screening of the film, which weaves together UK and Montana storylines while exploring generational sexual trauma. The film begins its festival run soon.  Recalibration & Harmony In October, I hit a wall. After years of overbooking myself - paired with shifts in my day job - I chose a necessary reset. Over several weeks, I reevaluated priorities and made deliberate choices about sustainability. One of those decisions was placing audiobook narration study and pursuit on hold. While I value the medium, the learning curve, technical demands, and time investment required more bandwidth than I had available alongside continuing with acting, filming, and making time for relationships. Simplifying allowed me to amplify what matters most. Acting remains my creative priority, supported by a stable day job that provides grounding. I’m grateful to friends who offered steady support during that time of recalibration. Harmony became another defining word this year for me. I began looking at my life as a whole - with more intention. I made room for joy: a Hairball concert (the bestest 80’s music reprise ever!), cut and dug new trails for mountain hiking and biking, seeing Father Stu at its local premiere, snowboarding in deep fluffy powder at home and in Utah, and my first trip to Europe - Scotland for a film festival, followed by time in London. I've been obsessed going to London since I was a girl. It's held my heart; its film, music, fashion, and history plus my lineage as ancestral roots there ✨   Closing Thoughts If there’s a way of being I continue to choose, it’s adding more love - choosing compassionate self-talk, leading myself in curiosity rather than anxiety, and allowing myself to be fully present in my art, work, and in life rather than scattershot spread too thin. I'm also choosing to celebrate work I've done. It feels like it goes by way to fast to fully inhabit the joy of completion. There are three films on Amazon Prime that are testament to the fortitude and perseverance for myself and entire cast and crews that have put these films together. Thank you for the continued support - for those who see what I’m building and offer encouragement along the way. Making art is not always easy, and I’m grateful for kindness and shared belief in the process.  Keep building your castles. Believe in magic. Notice the love that surrounds us in so many ways. With gratitude, Mary 🌼 P.S. I'm grateful for people following my creative path | Instagram and Facebook  Opening — A Year That Changed Me A whole year has flown by since I last blogged. For quite a few days, I felt bad that I’d dropped an artistic commitment I’d made to myself to write regularly… until I really let myself acknowledge how much I’ve been in the trenches of creating art, growing, and taking care of life in the past twelve months. So instead of staying in that, I decided to give myself a shout out and douse myself in some well-earned recognition, love, and warm validation. This past year didn’t just fill me up —it changed me. The Work — Deepening the Craft At the beginning of 2019, I committed to deepening my craft in a real way. I immersed myself in a three-and-a-half-month intensive series of online acting classes with Jo Kelly, followed later in the year by an industry-standard audition intensive with Crystal Carson in Atlanta. Alongside that, I completed five Masterclass online courses across acting, directing, filmmaking, and screenwriting subjects, took a six-week acting/storytelling class at Grand Street community theatre, and stayed engaged in a monthly play-reading study group. I made time to see fellow artists’ shows and performances —continuing to learn not just from study, but from being in the creative ecosystem itself. These classes became about more than training. I began to understand more deeply why I’m an artist —shedding things, people, and processes that didn’t support that— and building ways of working that align with how I learn and how I stay creatively alive and full.  Photo credits: Jason O'Neil, Justin Baker, Charles Perry The Work in the World — Film & Industry This year, the work stepped out into the world. I auditioned several times and was cast in the short film Homestead, filming in October 2019 with a stellar crew from LA and Montana. The project is now in post-production, with a completed rough cut and additional fundraising underway as it moves toward the festival circuit. I also worked with a group of Missoula filmmakers after being cast in We Burn Like This, and was cast in a local commercial as a snowboarder, with the PSA set to release soon. Another short I acted in, Sudden Developments, premiered at the Bigfork Film Festival in spring 2019. One of the standout moments of the year was traveling to Hollywood as both actress and executive producer for the screening of Willow Creek Road at the TCL Chinese Theatre. A truly dreamy highlight! I also contributed deeply to the documentary Black Cowboy, putting nearly two years of preparation into the project… completing an interview, supporting the team with connections, research, feedback, and even providing lodging and meals during production. It was a full-bodied contribution of time, energy, and care. Through all of this, I stepped more fully into calling myself a professional —clearer and more determined in how I want to share my talents on this wild, creative path.  Photo credits: Jenna Ciralli, Tashia Gates The Anchor — Wuthering Heights The largest accomplishment of this past year was being part of the team that completed the independent film Wuthering Heights. Throughout 2019 —and much of 2018— I spent nearly every Thursday night on conference calls with a small, tenacious team, working through every layer of the production. I gave countless lunch hours and evenings to scheduling, communication, team morale, reviewing edits, performing ADR, and supporting marketing efforts. It took grit, compromise, long-distance collaboration, hard conversations, and follow through on an overwhelming number of details. It wasn’t perfect but it was real. And the heart, talent, and care poured into it were felt by everyone who came to the screening.  We premiered in Montana in December 2019. After five and a half years of work, what began as an idea became a completed piece of film.  Photo credit: Rachel Riitano Our festival journey begins in January 2020 at the Flathead Lake International Cinemafest. You can follow us on Facebook or check our website to keep up with our journey with this film! Tap/click on the picture icons. The Life That Held It All Life didn’t pause while I was building all of this. I found grounding and freedom snowboarding across places like Lake Louise, Banff Sunshine, Sun Valley, Snowbird, and here at home in Montana. There’s nothing like being out on the mountain and letting the forest clear my energy and reconnect me to something bigger.  Summer brought its own kind of expansion… more time in nature, new friendships, and learning to ask for support with my emotions and mindset in ways that felt vulnerable and courageous. If you’ve never been, the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah has a unique mystique that watered my imagination for the poetry I write. At the same time, real life was happening. Truck issues that wouldn’t quit. A frozen main water pipe at my house, that included life with out running water for a week, a huge plumbing bill, and a new found immense gratitude for how blessed we are to have clean water plumbed right into our homes. Travel for my day job, including a national conference in Austin (and watching a million bats fly from under the Congress Avenue Bridge). Long days, full schedules, and nights where I fell into bed completely exhausted. There were also moments of showing up for others… helping family members through injury and emotional trauma, maintaining friendships, and doing my best to stay present in all of it. It was full. It was messy. It was real life alongside the art.  Support, Mentorship, and Healing I didn’t do this alone. This year, I deepened into healing and self-worth work with a group of women who supported me in learning to live with more self-love, presence, and honesty. Through that work, and the books we studied together, I began to shift the way I speak to myself and understand my own value. I also had the support of a dear veteran friend who introduced me to Tai Chi, grounding my energy and helping me focus in a new way and learn how to tame the wild anxiety I’ve had for years. Time spent outside with my feet in the grass and on the earth, moving, breathing, and learning to be present in my body became an unexpected and powerful part of my growth. Working with a craniosacral therapist helped me recover from injuries and reconnect to parts of myself that needed care and attention after years of pushing through.  I now have rituals that help me stay in the center of my personal power and also to process life. Embedded in my life always are books… these books were invaluable this past year “You Are a Badass at Making Money” “Rise Sister Rise” and “Everything is Figureoutable” have helped me observe self-conversation and begin curating a line of conversation that will help buoy my spirit and soul for my art and for me as a human being. These relationships and practices gave me steadiness, confidence, and a deeper sense of being supported as I grew. Who I Became This past year has been about individuating —about moving into owning myself more fully. Seeing and feeling me underneath the masks. Staying in courage to unmask. I’ve learned to handle my anxiety better. To communicate in real time instead of holding things in. To speak up for my value and my time. To create space away from people and environments that didn’t allow me to feel like myself and those that were holding me in place or holding me back. And then, to return back into life, friendships, love, and art with more authenticity, warmth, and most importantly greater self-trust. Not perfectly. But honestly. Gratitude I’m deeply grateful for the people in my life who showed up for me this year… friends and family who listened, supported, shared their knowledge, gave me space to vent, helped me when I needed it, and stood beside me through all of it. I truly couldn’t have done this year without you. Closing — Forward Edge I intend to carry everything I’ve learned this past year into my art, my work, my relationships, and my life in even bigger ways. I’m scared. I’m excited. And I’m ready. Cheers to 2020. xoxo  PS
Thank you for taking the time to read about this chapter. If you’ve never paused to look back at what you’ve done in a year, it’s worth it. Take a look through your phone; I’ll bet there are a ton of pictures you took of things that made you feel good. There’s often more there than we give ourselves credit for.  Happy Summer! Don't you love the season changes! I sure do :) Right now for me, in this season of my life, my schedule is running pretty packed with creative projects. One of the ones I've been looking forward to the most, Willow Creek Road, starts filming this week. Taking a real big breath and placing my focus as present as I can to enjoy every minute of this year long adventure getting to this point. Look for pictures soon! Sundance here we come! In between The Big Muddy web series filming, photography, a few acting classes, some travel, reading, writing, filming for the Willow Creek Road, working, studying and all the day-to-day chores... there is family and friends that I love adventuring with. I have said it before, nature recharges my soul. Mother Nature needs our attention and it gives so much in return. Earlier this month, I made my first long hike. I haven't made one this long in a few years. Our family feet carried us 12 miles round trip in about six hours. Hanging Valley Trail has been on my list. I was nervous that I didn't have the stamina to complete it; it was an intense hike. Lots of downed trees. Lots of pretty steep ups and downs. Through some tunnels and slabs of rock to the stopping end point. The end point was breathtaking as was our need for great big hamburgers once we got off the trail! I am keeping this month's post pretty short as I keep trying to pace myself more towards balance in my life. I do have lots I am learning and will start sharing more soon. All I want to say is, stay in the game! I know it's hard sometimes, things smack you in the face with disappointment or may be more work than what you might have thought. Stay after those dreams and goals. Shamelessly shine your light and talents bright out loud. Big hugs and loves  Well, I got back on my feet… and then, fell off the radar. I am always dreaming, reaching, living, creating and experiencing. We all are. There are so many ups and downs. When people I know, love or care about disappear, it leaves me wondering and curious... what happened? So... where did I go? I've been busy…a life cliché I despise. I thought about sharing many times along the way and I haven’t. Lame, I know…Why? Who knows. I folded up into myself to re-sort, process, re-build and now re-emerge to find my sense of life direction still going north, south, east and west all at once. It’s been a job and a half tracking myself.
A list of credits roll for creative pursuits this past year: a kickass production of Spamalot with the Helena Theatre Company, a short film titled, “Beast” (was nominated best actor but didn’t win), a military film about PTSD that completed production, attended webinars to improve the business of acting, photo shoots, attended premieres of two Helena made inde films, networking with other artists, chakra energy class and study, poetry submitted for review for on-line publishing that was rejected, auditions, and started voice lessons and am now up to a full year with a few recitals -no glass breakage, whew… and much more. What a year leveling up skills! …and then there’s the personal stuff. Processing a year of firsts without my dad has been real rough. I miss him. Snowboarding, hiking and my first mountain biking adventures -nature feeds my soul. The realization that my daughters are living life, don’t actively need me, and holy cow wow, did I do a good job as a mom! Friends with celebrations and crises to support. First trip out of the country to Nicaragua -so so many firsts there, hard to count: -the sweetness (and scariness) of my first swim in the ocean & learning to surf, -my soul being deeply touched being among so many brave, resourceful people making their way in a poverty stricken country. (This is a picture of a typical rural home). We are so lucky in this country. My heart was blessed with so many authentic smiles despite their rough life. What a gift. -allowing myself to be open and sweetly vulnerable to love again, which left me face down for a while with my heart broken into a million pieces. And, of course, there is all the usual day-to-day life stuff at work and home which I am lucky enough and appreciate being able to do. So I’m just another actor with emotions, creativity and life happening…why the heck check back in? When I fall down, over, off of…or anywhere, I must get back up, bounce, or something. My inner champion doesn’t let me stay down. One of the biggest struggles I've had in the last year is allowing the large range of emotions coming from my experiences to all live in the same house. I kept wanting to sift out the bad and painful ones. They were sinking me. What I chose to learn in making room for all of my life and it's rich experience of emotions is that change is always there… as is my resilient storytelling about myself, to myself. I realized my self-talk (storytelling inside myself of what my life was going to look like) had gotten saturated in heartache. My brain and soul were in a huge tug-o-war over what life experiences and emotions were going to dictate my next move...in anything. Allowing pain and heartache to just be in my house has been plain friggin' hard. The trick, though, was for me to learn to not focus on the emotion/event but rather... use the energy from them to propel me forward in creative and other parts of my life. That energy has helped me start making better decisions for me. And it all started...from the decision and raw determination to get up out of that sinking feeling. I've noticed too, that my heart has softened with more compassion and I was able to re-introduce me to my vulnerability which had gotten so many hard spots from obsessing about getting the heartache out of the house. SO I am beginning again... or maybe even better, continuing where I Ieft off. Cheers to the hundredth or maybe thousandth time of falling and getting up. If you have fallen lately, keep a soft heart for yourself, it's ok, it's going to be ok… just get up and get going. If you choose to fall... fall upwards, bounce... :)  Back on my feet… well mostly. The last eight months have been pretty rocky. My daughter broke her kneecap which required surgery, my neighbor passed away as did two of our family cats, a couple other family members have been in the hospital for severe digestive problems requiring surgery and stroke, and my dad was diagnosed with cancer in December 2012. I can’t write those words and not feel a large watery lump in my throat and tears run down my face. My winter and into mid-spring involved many trips to care for my daughter and dad; between Salt Lake and Seattle, I think I may have put over 4,000 miles on my truck.
I watched my dad over the years create life and care for us. He worked so many lower end blue collar jobs from tire changing, security, post & pole, odd jobs and a lot of janitorial jobs. Hard, brutal work to do to make sure our family had the bare minimum basics. Our family has been homeless and hungry and stranded. I watched him stand in unemployment lines. I watched him swallow the largest pride a man has in providing for his family by having to pan handle for money when we were stranded in traveling. My family had so many, many just plain old life survival hardships, that when we got the lab reports, I was stupefied speechless. I was mad as hell at God as I thought we had served our time in tragedy and suffering over the years pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps barely surviving at times. I think I lived in a make-believe world and thought that maybe maybe illness and death would not apply in the usual way. We could just live to old age and pass away in our sleep, if we had to die even at all. He passed away in mid-April of this year. I made my peace with my dad a long time ago; so in being with him dying, there was very little angst left. Being with my dad at this point was beyond words -it was the purest state of being and honoring another‘s spirit. I was so very humbled as he was so brave in facing everything in the last months of his life - I hope I can be that brave. My memories now are ever so precious of sitting with him wrapped in blankets on my couch and massaging his back when he hurt. We always had a bit of tug of war on life perspectives; him coming from the 1940’s perspective and me with my Generation X artist view. One thing we never argued about was how much we loved each other. I miss having him here to share my life with. I love you very much dad, you were one of my life hero’s. |
Creative writing by Mary Riitano...I'm an actress sharing my creative process through personal stories and poetry - exploring acting, growth, my voice, and my inner life as an artist. 
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