Folks, I fear a crash is a comin'. Tonight is the final performance of our show, and tomorrow I have to wake up all the same and face my life again without the glorious protection of the theatre. Without the high of being paid to collaborate with a range of artists to create something utterly new. Without the rush of presenting yourself, your thoughts, your actions every night in front of a crowd of strangers and being applauded for it. Without the freedom and joy of feeling you are achieving one of your higher purposes in this world, especially when other ones seem so slippery and unattainable.
Oy.
I don't really have a plan for how to navigate this transition. I'm going to try to take a dance class tomorrow morning (if the cast party doesn't kick my ass too hard), and then I have an acupuncture appointment, but that only takes me until 1pm on Monday; after that, time stretches out in front of me. It's likely I'll get sick; that's my usual default distraction in cases like this. Or perhaps this time, I can find my way to a less destructive transition tool.
I know I've sorely neglected both my blog and my friends, so I will endeavor to pour myself into those areas. And once upon a time, I had a dream of a California garden, so perhaps I can use my freshly earned theatre paychecks to begin that project.
All of this, of course, is an attempt to keep myself from doing nothing but obsessing about my other, underlying, important above all else project, with its frustratingly elusive results and my complete lack of control over it.
We've got some big dates coming our way: Our 5 year wedding anniversary is June 13th, and then there is Father's Day, and finally, at the end of July looms the one year marker. I am really angry about that. I am not at all ready to be a year away from their birth and death: we just passed the 10 month marker and I really can't believe that much time has passed. When I think of how much we have accomplished, and how far we've come, it seems like a shockingly short amount of time. But when I think of how close I still feel to having been pregnant with them, to having held them in my belly and then in my arms, to having had to make that final, awful decision to let someone wheel them away, knowing we would never kiss them again, I feel completely offended that the world has had the audacity to have spun nearly 365 times since then. I want to scream with rage about that.
But one step at a time: July will come, but first I have to face tomorrow.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Chicken
Last night, at our second to last show, the Artistic Director of the festival came into the dressing room a few minutes before curtain, to ask us all a favor:
"Guys, tonight after the show we are doing a tribute to one of our playwrights, and I'd like to do some 30 second excerpts from his works over the years. I've got scripts here: would you guys be willing to perform them, impromptu?"
We all look up from the makeup mirrors, murmur our acceptance, and Jim begins to cast the excerpts. I return to my makeup and am not really listening, when I hear him say,
"And we need someone to play a woman who clucks like a chicken. Lisa?"
Thanks, Jim.
We do our show to a sold-out and incredibly receptive crowd, and then run back to the dressing room to scrape off our cartoon-like makeup from the final piece, throw on our street clothes, grab our 30 second scripts and return to the stage. The house lights are on, so we can see the audience now, Jim is chatting, and it is all very casual. We sit on the stage, on the raised step that runs across the back, and as Jim announces the various excerpts, we step up in groups or pairs and read our playlettes.
Jim announces our chicken play, and as I find my feet, my inner chicken takes over. My arms fold wing-like into my sides, and my head starts jutting forward, sharply angling from the chin. I open my mouth, and begin to squawk and cluck, as I peck and scratch and strut about.
The audience is laughing loudly.
My scene partner tries to get his lines out, as I continue to impersonate poultry, and now my fellow actors are laughing on the stage behind me. I let out a particularly loud and inspired squawk, and then, surrounded by all this energy, all this glee and silliness, I give over to the moment and I break: I crack myself up and I start laughing.
The audience now becomes hysterical, which makes me laugh all the harder. My fellow cast members are rolling around on the stage behind me, and my scene partner is holding on for dear life, managing thus far to keep his straight face. He's supposed to have me under hypnosis (hence the cluck like a chicken routine), so he takes two fingers and points them at my eyes and then at his own, trying to help me regain my composure. We are nose to nose when I produce another cluck which cracks us both up and I wind up spitting in his face as laughter and saliva spew out of me like a geyser.
The room is vibrating with laughter: we have all lost control and no one cares. We can't wait to see what will happen next. I consider trying to lay an egg, and decide I might actually lose continence if I take this any further. I settle down and listen to my scene partner, who has now reached the part of the script where he is bringing me out from under hypnosis. He counts 1, and I cluck in response. He counts two and I cluck twice, cracking us all up for a final time. He counts 3 and I snap out of hypnosis, and end what might rank as one of the most enjoyable 30 second intervals of my life.
"Guys, tonight after the show we are doing a tribute to one of our playwrights, and I'd like to do some 30 second excerpts from his works over the years. I've got scripts here: would you guys be willing to perform them, impromptu?"
We all look up from the makeup mirrors, murmur our acceptance, and Jim begins to cast the excerpts. I return to my makeup and am not really listening, when I hear him say,
"And we need someone to play a woman who clucks like a chicken. Lisa?"
Thanks, Jim.
We do our show to a sold-out and incredibly receptive crowd, and then run back to the dressing room to scrape off our cartoon-like makeup from the final piece, throw on our street clothes, grab our 30 second scripts and return to the stage. The house lights are on, so we can see the audience now, Jim is chatting, and it is all very casual. We sit on the stage, on the raised step that runs across the back, and as Jim announces the various excerpts, we step up in groups or pairs and read our playlettes.
Jim announces our chicken play, and as I find my feet, my inner chicken takes over. My arms fold wing-like into my sides, and my head starts jutting forward, sharply angling from the chin. I open my mouth, and begin to squawk and cluck, as I peck and scratch and strut about.
The audience is laughing loudly.
My scene partner tries to get his lines out, as I continue to impersonate poultry, and now my fellow actors are laughing on the stage behind me. I let out a particularly loud and inspired squawk, and then, surrounded by all this energy, all this glee and silliness, I give over to the moment and I break: I crack myself up and I start laughing.
The audience now becomes hysterical, which makes me laugh all the harder. My fellow cast members are rolling around on the stage behind me, and my scene partner is holding on for dear life, managing thus far to keep his straight face. He's supposed to have me under hypnosis (hence the cluck like a chicken routine), so he takes two fingers and points them at my eyes and then at his own, trying to help me regain my composure. We are nose to nose when I produce another cluck which cracks us both up and I wind up spitting in his face as laughter and saliva spew out of me like a geyser.
The room is vibrating with laughter: we have all lost control and no one cares. We can't wait to see what will happen next. I consider trying to lay an egg, and decide I might actually lose continence if I take this any further. I settle down and listen to my scene partner, who has now reached the part of the script where he is bringing me out from under hypnosis. He counts 1, and I cluck in response. He counts two and I cluck twice, cracking us all up for a final time. He counts 3 and I snap out of hypnosis, and end what might rank as one of the most enjoyable 30 second intervals of my life.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Dream
Early this morning, I had a dream that I was hiking up a steep steep climb. I was with two other people, a man and a woman. Got to a point where the climb became nearly vertical; there was actually a structure built into the rock, a little ladder like the one you use to climb out of a pool. I was having trouble climbing the rungs; it was almost as if I no longer had any strength in my legs. I got a glimpse of the top, and it was stunning, and frightening: gorgeous clear, unencumbered vistas of beautiful scenery, and a sheer drop below. I committed to getting to the top, to taking in the scenery despite the fear, and the man and the woman together helped me take the steps, find my strength (supplying their own where mine failed), keep my balance, and make it safely to the top.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Thank you, patient readers
Wow. Two Weeks since my last post! I am so sorry my patient readers and I will try not to go this long without a post again.
It has been a crazy wonderful two weeks, though. I've rehearsed, tech'd and opened in a show, acted in three student film projects, gotten my SAT students through their May test and my GMAT student ready to take his test, performed in a staged reading of a new play, hosted my dear dear friend Alyson from Dubai, and survived both Bruno's two week trip to Europe and Mother's Day. Phew!
Where to start? Well, the play has been bliss every step of the way. And I've felt a new kind of freedom during the rehearsal process that I'm sure is a direct gift from Pedro and Archer. It used to be that when I started working with a new group of people, I would be full of self doubt: Am I good enough to be here? Will the director doubt his/her choice as soon as I open my mouth? Do the other actors like me? Am I cool enough to fit in? This time around, there was no room for any of that noise. I feel like I have been burned clean by the events of this past year, and I am struggling so hard just to be wherever it is that I physically am, that there is no energy left for extraneous nonsense. And, without the burden of my own doubts, my rehearsing and performing have become unfettered: richer and fuller and more deeply free than they have ever been before.
And as it turns out, the other actors do like me, and I am cool enough. Nice.
I also have to mention the laughter. I am not sure I have ever laughed so much as I have during this rehearsal process. Again, I chalk this up to my sons, who have left me with a lack of self-consciousness that has allowed me to experience the sheer joy of a good joke and to crack one back with abandon. The particular collection of people I'm working with are a bunch of cut-ups; showing up for rehearsal sometimes feels like being in the middle of a Muppet Show episode. Good jokes, bad jokes, in-jokes, sex jokes: the energy just flies around the room, one actor topping the next until someone crowns it and we all burst into laughter and return to rehearsing. My face and ribs ache with laughing: after these past nine months I am sorely out of practice. It is so joyful, so appreciative of the moment at hand, and I am so filled with gratitude for the jokes, the joke crackers and the chance to be part of it all.
We had our first preview, our first time performing in front of an audience, this Thursday, and it was magical. As always, as we entered tech at the beginning of the week everything fell apart. We tripped over each other on and off stage, forgot lines, futzed with set pieces and props: the usual chaos. Thursday afternoon we were still getting new technical elements and it felt utterly hopeless that we could even stumble through an evening performance. And yet here came the evening, and there sat the audience, and on went the performers. And, magically, no lines were forgotten (well, not noticeably so...), and gaps tightened, performances bumped up a level, and train wrecks from the afternoon were steaming beautifully down their tracks. Something larger than all of us emerged from our collective creative energy and professional experience and carried both us and the audience through the night. A glorious thing.
And then came Press Night, and then came Opening, and then The Sunday After It All, the freebie performance when you've made it all the way from the start of tech through opening, the directors have all left, and the actors and stage manager now own the show. It is a strange feeling: a combination of abandonment and relaxation. And an excitement to see how things will grow and evolve, now that the fury of creation is done.
It has been a crazy wonderful two weeks, though. I've rehearsed, tech'd and opened in a show, acted in three student film projects, gotten my SAT students through their May test and my GMAT student ready to take his test, performed in a staged reading of a new play, hosted my dear dear friend Alyson from Dubai, and survived both Bruno's two week trip to Europe and Mother's Day. Phew!
Where to start? Well, the play has been bliss every step of the way. And I've felt a new kind of freedom during the rehearsal process that I'm sure is a direct gift from Pedro and Archer. It used to be that when I started working with a new group of people, I would be full of self doubt: Am I good enough to be here? Will the director doubt his/her choice as soon as I open my mouth? Do the other actors like me? Am I cool enough to fit in? This time around, there was no room for any of that noise. I feel like I have been burned clean by the events of this past year, and I am struggling so hard just to be wherever it is that I physically am, that there is no energy left for extraneous nonsense. And, without the burden of my own doubts, my rehearsing and performing have become unfettered: richer and fuller and more deeply free than they have ever been before.
And as it turns out, the other actors do like me, and I am cool enough. Nice.
I also have to mention the laughter. I am not sure I have ever laughed so much as I have during this rehearsal process. Again, I chalk this up to my sons, who have left me with a lack of self-consciousness that has allowed me to experience the sheer joy of a good joke and to crack one back with abandon. The particular collection of people I'm working with are a bunch of cut-ups; showing up for rehearsal sometimes feels like being in the middle of a Muppet Show episode. Good jokes, bad jokes, in-jokes, sex jokes: the energy just flies around the room, one actor topping the next until someone crowns it and we all burst into laughter and return to rehearsing. My face and ribs ache with laughing: after these past nine months I am sorely out of practice. It is so joyful, so appreciative of the moment at hand, and I am so filled with gratitude for the jokes, the joke crackers and the chance to be part of it all.
We had our first preview, our first time performing in front of an audience, this Thursday, and it was magical. As always, as we entered tech at the beginning of the week everything fell apart. We tripped over each other on and off stage, forgot lines, futzed with set pieces and props: the usual chaos. Thursday afternoon we were still getting new technical elements and it felt utterly hopeless that we could even stumble through an evening performance. And yet here came the evening, and there sat the audience, and on went the performers. And, magically, no lines were forgotten (well, not noticeably so...), and gaps tightened, performances bumped up a level, and train wrecks from the afternoon were steaming beautifully down their tracks. Something larger than all of us emerged from our collective creative energy and professional experience and carried both us and the audience through the night. A glorious thing.
And then came Press Night, and then came Opening, and then The Sunday After It All, the freebie performance when you've made it all the way from the start of tech through opening, the directors have all left, and the actors and stage manager now own the show. It is a strange feeling: a combination of abandonment and relaxation. And an excitement to see how things will grow and evolve, now that the fury of creation is done.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
