With a Little Help From My Friends: Part I

As 2009 dawns, I find I am beginning to reenter life. And I am thus beginning to find out just how socially lobotomized this whole experience has left me. At our Hanukkah party, I mostly played with the kids: that's about the conversation level I can handle.

A few weeks ago at an audition, I met another actress from NYC: I thrust my business card at her and asked if I could take her to coffee and pick her brain about transitioning to the Bay Area. To my delight and terror, she contacted me, and invited me to go to the theatre. In Berkeley. Oh G-d: a social date and a car trip. But I'm going balls to the walls this year, and so I said yes, struggled to squeeze my still heavy body into clothes that weren't sweat pants, gamely typed the address into my dashboard friend, and was off.

I had a triumphant beginning: I made it to Berkeley only hearing one snide "recalculating", and I parallel parked! Nothing can stop me now! I arrived at the theatre early, walked in, and found myself face to face with the one casting director in the area I know from previous work in California. She recognized me, gave me a huge hug, and told me of work she already had in mind for me. And I stuttered and stammered, and thanked her, I think (G-d, I hope). And then continued to talk to her, trying to prove I was in fact a human being instead of the rutabega I had managed so far, and it was only a few minutes later that I realized we were standing in front of a large group of people all wearing black and white and now staring at me; she had been conducting a meeting with that evening's volunteer ushers, and here I was completely oblivious and yammering away like an idiot. Oy Vey. Can I go home now?

But there, through the glass front door, is my new friend, waving and looking bubbly. She comes in and rescues me, grabs us wine and talks non-stop. I stop beating myself up for the opening fiasco, and melt into the torrent of her energy. She knows everyone in the room. She waves to person after person, walks over and introduces me. People look at me expectantly, and I can't think of a thing to say.

I used to be able to do this. I could walk through a room of strangers, introduce myself, ask them about their work and tell them about mine. Exchange cards. Now, I'm starring dumbly at all these nice people thinking: "I just experienced tragedy and I'm struggling to survive. That is my current work." But ofcourse you can't say things like that in a theatre lobby. Well, I suppose you can, but even I am not that bold.

But G-d bless my new friend, she bulldozes right over my silence and proceeds to tell all her friends how I am this fabulous actress just arrived from NYC, and that they are all going to want to work with me (mind you, this friend has yet to see my work). She holds me by the elbow, and her chatter and her warmth bubble over me, and I stop worrying and take a back seat and listen. I listen to her talk, and ask and listen. I watch and I relearn how to converse, how to chit chat.

The show is starting; the schmoozing is done. I relax into my seat in the darkness: this part I can handle. We see six new plays that evening, and I am delighted, revitalized, by the power of fresh new work, new ideas, raw, just hatched. I am in love, again, with theatre, it's collaborative nature, the honest helpless passion of it's participants. I think I could step back into this. I think I could let this continue my healing.

I walk out of the theatre with tears in my eyes. I am grateful for the whole evening: for the writers, the actors, for the bubbly new friend by my elbow guiding me back into life. Grateful for my boys, my little angels who are causing me to rebirth myself as well.