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jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Jordan 📚
@jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
440 followers 690 following 1.3K posts
28 | she/her | 666 is my lucky number. Posting books and rambling about theatre
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jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Checked on my blog for the first time in a long time and hey, that’s fun!
Pink text on a white background, surrounded by confetti: “100k.” Below that in black text: “Congratulations! Your site, Theatre Thoughts Blog, passed 100,000 all-time views.”
October 7, 2026 at 2:24 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Maybe the high cost is the point. Pay women less than men, make childcare prohibitively expensive, push women out of the work force, make them dependent on their husbands. While we’re at it, force them to give birth to babies they don’t want to guarantee it happens.
Leo @Leonajardinho C..• My project manager came into my office this morning to tell me she's stepping down to become a stay-at-home mom. She makes $68,000 a year. Her husband earns $72,000. They just had their second child, so she called licensed local daycare centers to get quotes for an infant and a toddler. Average cost: $2,650 a month. That's $31,800 every year straight out of their post-tax income. After federal taxes, state taxes, and healthcare deductions, her take-home pay was roughly $3,700 a month. After paying $2,650 for daycare, she was working 40 hours a week to net $1,050 a month.....or about $6.50 an hour. She looked at me and said: "I'm literally spending 160 hours a month away from my kids just to clear $250 a week after childcare costs." We didn't just build an expensive economy. We built a system where holding down a mid-class job as a second earner costs more than staying home.
September 27, 2026 at 6:21 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
My mom said she and my sister are taking my baby nephew to the zoo on Monday and I got all sad and said “I wanna go to the zoo :(“ and then I went “WAIT! IM UNEMPLOYED! I CAN!” and the world felt like this
Dolphins leaping out of the water with a rainbow in the background, it’s a bright sunny day and everyone is happy
September 19, 2026 at 8:48 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
FIRST DRAFT OF THE NOVEL IS DONE! AND BAD! HELL YEAH 🎸🔥
September 15, 2026 at 12:27 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Real fuckin hyped about this so I’m shouting it from all the rooftops
I am so unspeakably excited (screaming crying throwing up etc) to post this. Pinching myself and hardly daring to believe- I keep rereading the emails out of genuine anxiety that I might have hallucinated them— that I will get to play Ada Lovelace in ADA AND THE ENGINE at Iron Horse Theatre Company this December. The play is about the shared efforts of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron, to develop the Analytical Engine, a programmable machine designed to process numbers and information in a manner that is essentially identical to how modern computers do... designed almost a full century before the first computer. As two visionaries vastly ahead of their time, their strikingly "close * working relationship makes tor a really very juicy bit of history, made tragic by all the difficulties that come hand-in-hand with genius that is only somewhat appreciated by contemporaries. All the more so for Ada, a very bright, very young woman, blessed with 21st-century foresight but trapped in a time before first-wave feminism. This play is FUNNY and SAD and full of EXCITEMENT and YEARNING and this really does feel like the opportunity of a lifetime. I fell in love as soon as I read the SYNOPSIS and have only gotten more insufferable since then. You should SEE the state of my group chat (where I've talked about literally nothing else for DAYS). I cannot WAIT. look forward to filling your feeds with ads and ticket info as they come. A portrait of Ada Lovelace, wearing a fancy gown, silk gloves, and an ornate headdress. Behind her are various mathematical formulae and snippets of computer code. In any event, on the evening of Wednesday, June 5, 1833, Ada went out with her mother, the both of them evidently at peace again, to a party in fashionable London. There, Ada was fated to meet that evening the one person in Britain who understood her utterly fascinated interest in mechanical questions that had so exhausted her mother, a man who was driven in much the same way as she was. His name was Charles Babbage. As a result of their elective affinity, seventeen-year-old Ada Byron's insight into the future of calculation would erupt into a new and most radical kind of imagining, and would give her a vision of a kind of Jacquard loom that wove, not silk thread, but arithmetic and mathematics. In other words: a computer.
September 7, 2026 at 3:08 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I’ve been working on line flashcards for this play and it’s been HOURS of work so far.

I’ve been sending this pic to ppl and asking how many pages of the script they think this stack represents

Everyone so far has guessed 50-60…

Fellas. Not even to the end of page 28
A stack of slim paper flashcards in multicolors, about an inch think
September 5, 2026 at 10:10 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I’ve been reading about Ada Lovelace and her work on the Analytical Engine and it’s just really hard not to draw the obvious parallels between her breathless excitement over this “thinking machine” and the so-called “thinking machine” of AI dominating all modern discourse, but this bit stands out
Passage from a book, “Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age”: Nor, indeed, does she have any misconception that the Analytical Engine is a kind of miraculous machine. She emphasizes that it can only do what it is told to do. As she writes: It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do discover that our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable. The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with. …
September 5, 2026 at 12:13 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I just saw what has to be a strong contender for the funniest Facebook comment of all time. NOT STOMP
July 30, 2026 at 11:51 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I’ve been deciding whether or not to go to an audition tonight. Decided on “yes.” LFG
July 27, 2026 at 9:41 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Hit and flew straight past a major milestone tonight. 100k!! I am simply so pleased.

Editing is going to be a nightmare. No I’m not done yet. Yes I am having the time of my life
The statistics panel of Scrivener, showing the total word count of a project sitting at over 100,000 words.
July 9, 2026 at 1:17 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Since starting an office job where I spend a good chunk of the day on the phone, I’ve noticed my voice gets tired by the end of the day? So alongside paying extra attention to hydration, I decided to give this supplement I’m getting aggressively marketed to me a try (I’m nothing if not a sucker)
VocalGuard supplement. Bag claims it “enhances vocal strength and clarity” with a “science-backed formula”
June 30, 2026 at 4:15 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I recorded a little video earlier to show my friends the pretty light effect I set up on my keyboard, and when I listened back I thought, wait, is this ASMR?

So here’s 3 minutes of me word sprinting, you tell me if it’s ASMR or not
June 26, 2026 at 1:39 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I met up with a friend I haven’t seen since high school and she dropped this on me completely out of nowhere fully 4 weeks ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it
Today 9:23 PM I want you to know I have thought probably every single day since we hung out about you telling me I could be the Sarah Paulson to someone's Holland Taylor Every single day
June 22, 2026 at 1:24 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I’m on page two and they’ve already won me over
June 14, 2026 at 5:48 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I really liked the preview video for Liberation at the tonys so I ordered it as I was watching and I’m excited to read
June 14, 2026 at 5:44 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Oof ouch my bones oh no
Except from a page: “Jon is in his forties. Annie is nineteen. She is still learning what "normal" is. Jon teaches her what normal is: if sexuality is permitted between them, it's because Jon permits it.”
June 10, 2026 at 2:45 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Hyped as hell to read this
Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes by Hannah Moscovitch
June 9, 2026 at 10:53 PM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
You bet your sweet bippy
“People also ask” “Is Twelfth Night LGBTQ?”
June 2, 2026 at 1:33 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
We closed Prescription: Murder today! Great fun. An actor lost her fake mustache halfway through a scene and brought the house down.
May 18, 2026 at 12:09 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
One of my actors put on her full costume for the first time today and it was genuinely so jarring that I kept thinking she was a stranger who wasn’t supposed to be here
A photo of a masculine-presenting person with short gray hair wearing old-fashioned retro style glasses, a gray suit, and a gray and brown tie. The person is standing on stage for a theatrical production. Below the photo is a text message that reads “Today 9:30 PM Our sound guy said our lead looks like Bill Clinton and I'm devastated,” below that, partially cut off, are the words “I can’t think about anything else” We said a "dramatic drag" on a cigarette was the cue for a blackout and the sound guy went "penciling in 'dramatic drag'" and I said "that's what Rachel's doing right now" and everyone lost it
May 12, 2026 at 3:33 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
We’ve been rehearsing in a hall split by a room divider. Most nights there hasn’t even been someone on the other side, it’s been very chill

Today someone WAS in the other room. AND. They had an accordion player
April 17, 2026 at 1:39 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I’m up to date on the space business
April 11, 2026 at 1:41 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Yet another banger
A director cannot hide from an audience because intentions are always visible, palpable. An audience senses your attitude towards them. They smell your fright or conde-scension. They know instinctively that you want only to impress or conquer. They sense your engagement or lack of it. These qualities live in your body and are visible in your work. You must have a reason to do what it is you do because these reasons are felt by anyone who comes in contact with your work. It matters how you treat people, how you take responsibility in a crisis, what values you develop, your politics, what you read, how you speak and even which words you choose. You cannot hide.
March 30, 2026 at 3:22 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
Having heard about Clavicular (against my will) I assumed he had to be some kind of freakishly attractive guy, to be some kind of Head Honcho Of Attractive Men? And he’s just. A regular decent-looking guy. This is the face of “looksmaxxing”? He’s just a very normal dude
March 28, 2026 at 3:59 AM
jaaaygilbert.bsky.social
I’m just live tweeting Anne Bogart at this point but god this book slaps
every time I begin work on a new production I feel as though I am out of my league; that I know nothing and have no notion how to begin and I'm sure that someone else should be doing my job, someone assured, who knows what to do, someone who is really a professional. I feel unbalanced, uncomfortable and out of place. I feel like a sham. In short, I am terrified. Normally, I find a way to make it through the research and table-work stage of rehearsal, where the necessary dramaturgical discussions, analysis and readings happen. But then, always, the dreaded moment arrives when it is time to put something on to the stage. How can anything be right, true or appropriate? I desperately try to find an excuse to do anything else, to procrastinate further. When we do finally have to begin work on the stage, everything feels artificial, arbitrary and affected to me. And 1 am convinced that the actors think that I am out of my mind. Every time the dramaturge steps into the rehearsal hall, I am sure that they are distressed that nothing we are doing reflects the previous dramaturgical discussions. I feel unsophisticated and superficial. Fortunately, atter a while in this dance of insecurity, I start to notice that the actors are actually beginning to transform the senseless staging into something I can get enthused about and respond to. I have spoken with a number of theatre directors and found that I am not alone in this sensation of being out of my league at the beginning of rehearsals. We all tremble in terror before the impossibility of beginning. It is important to remember that a director's work, as with any artist, is intuitive. Many young directors make the big mistake of assuming that directing is about being in control, telling others what to do, having ideas and getting what you ask for. I do not believe that these abilities are the qualities that make a good director or exciting theatre. Directing is about feeling, about being in the room with other people; with actors, with designers with an audience. It is about having a feel for time and space, about breathing, and responding fully to the situation at hand, being able to plunge and encourage a plunge into the unknown at the right moment.
March 26, 2026 at 4:38 PM