Have I mentioned?

That I am hip and urban? I went out to a concert last night (on a school night! how daring!) and it was a truly eclectic artist, the harpist Joanna Newsom. She plays a massive harp, it's at least twice as big as she is, but she plays folk/pop/magic songs with the harp, and sometimes additional guitar or drums. She's got a new album on which she plays with an entire orchestra, but she's touring with a 5 piece, stripped down version of that orchestration. Amazing - she played a few tunes alone from earlier albums, then sat down with her band and played her entire new album start to finish.

When I say she plays the harp, she PLAYS. It is astonishing to watch how fast her fingers move - you can't even distinguish how the notes you hear match up with the movement of her hands. Her lyrics also stun me. A review I read described her lyrics as "lapidary", and I confess I had to look that up (it was a Brit writing, naturally, my mother is right, they DO have better vocabularies than Americans), but it turns out the word is perfect. Lapidary is an adjective describing the conciseness, precision, and refinement of expression associated with the cutting of gems. So, yes, her lyrics are like precisely cut jewels. The words shimmer because of where she places them, how she shapes them.

So why is she not storming the airwaves? Well, of course, she plays folk sounding music on a harp, it's hardly mainstream, but also, her voice is unusual, reedy, peircing. I like it enormously myself but my boyfriend does liken her to a drunk Appalachian white trash child. He is NOT hip and urban, like myself, and did not go see her play.

As you might expect, such an alternative player attracts an alternative crowd - not even an Alternative crowd, not your stereotypical urban music goer (who, for some reason in my mind, looks like a member of Panic! at the Disco without, or possibly with, the makeup). No, this was a meshing of people who might play Dungeons and Dragons and people who just came from work at the bank, a mom and dad with their five year old child next to a poseur with vintage leather jacket.

It was heartening, because Joanna Newsom is really alluring, and it was nice to see that her music has enough appeal to sell out two shows at the Logan Auditorium.

Also, I like feeling hip enough to be on the inside of a music sensation.

Juggle, juggle....drop

I spent yesterday fielding calls from agents. You'd think this would be good, right?

Agent A puts me on hold for a gig on Tuesday.
Agent B comes along and asks if I'd be available for a Tues/Wed/Thurs job.
I call and bug Agent A, wait around for about an hour and discover I've been "released" for Tuesday, so now I am actually available.
While waiting for that job to come through, Agent C calls and asks could I work a gig on Wednesday.
So I start harassing Agent B to find out if the Tues/Wed/Thurs job came through.

The dust has settled and the answer is that after all that frantic phoning, I've been released from all three jobs. As in, I didn't book any of them.

I've noticed an odd convergence is happening regarding this blog. It's being read by people who could feasibly feature in it. Now, as a general rule, that very phenomenon is the reason I kept a blog and didn't tell anyone it was here for a long time. I remember very clearly telling a new aquaintance about the blog and later realizing that I had effectively nixed writing about her. (And trust me, she would have been an interesting subject.)

But when I headed off to NY this summer, I thought - perfect! Here's a time and place where no one knows I'm writing about them, as long as I keep my mouth shut about it to them. Hurrah! The shackles were off and I was free to bitch and moan, and what's more, there were people reading! True, I was probably only up to about 10, maybe 15 readers, but still, that's heady stuff for a girl whose page was once written with the sole intent of amusing and provoking the one person who knew it existed. That's an increase of 1500%!

I think. My math is rusty.

However, now I am back in my daily life, and the cat is out of the bag, but I am interacting with people who could read the blog. It was satisfying this summer to attempt to be polite and then unleash all my cattiness for the blog, but when the people you want to be snarky about can look up what you said about them, you are no longer even attempting to be polite.

It's quite a bind for a good southern girl. Here I am, politely waiting for certain family characters to die in order not to offend them when I write about them and make a fortune, but if I keep chattering on about my daily life on the blog, I'm potentially offending those with whom I live and work. It's troubling. I see why people turn to fiction. Or even, *ahem*, completely unintelligible obsfucation of the insanely quotidian nature of their lives. (You know, they make it sound elaborate when it's just boring.)

But I'm off the subject. Or am I? See, I could be talking about someone who is actually reading the blog right now! It could be YOU!

It probably isn't, though. You had to look up "quotidian", didn't you?

Maybe that's the solution...I should be snarky to people right to their faces.

Beyond my means

The street I now live on is swanky. This condo is not entirely swanky - it's fairly modest, though very confortable and well fitted out. But the street itself has big masions and outrageous implications of wealth. This weekend, someone had a valet stand outside their house for their private party. How convenient. Apparently, George Bush had lunch with someone on the street last week when he was in town.

I am, clearly, living beyond my own income.

Also, I am grumpy and ill at ease. The weather makes me long for other times and places, and I get mired in nostaglia. But with no specific project on the horizon, I'm discouraged. I went to an audition last night, which was great, and have been doing a series of commercial ones, but no actual work has turned up yet. It's nice to have a rest, but now I'd like to get back to doing the things I love.

Which means I really should get out of my pajamas before noon, right?

Strange

So, I must admit I'm something of a stalker. I get obsessed about certain people or details, and I hunt them down, without malice.

There's some stalking in my past. I'm not proud of it, but it makes a good story. A week ago I was at my 10-year college reunion - enjoyable, and less strewn with emotional land mines than I might have guessed. I saw a friend I haven't seen in all of the ten years, and who I have wanted to see, because I felt she would appreciate the fact that I fell madly in love with an ex-boyfriend of hers and...well, there's stalking involved, but I won't get into that. (Becky knows this story...)

Last weekend, I told my college friend that story, and it was so strange...in the story was a person in whom I had invested much emotion and thought, and no matter how you looked at it, I had been completely wrong to do so, clearly obsessive and pretty wacky. I did finally move on from thinking about him, but a few years ago I tried to get in touch with a bunch of friends I'd lost track of, and he was one of them. I googled his name, got what I think was a current office address and sent a letter in a batch of about 40 letters. (To 40 different people - I didn't send him 40 letters. That WOULD be crazy.) I never heard anything from him, but the google revealed that we actually lived in the same city. Maybe. His office was here, I didn't try to find a home address. I wasn't surprised he didn't respond - I did not come off well in the story, and in his place, I'm not sure I would have responded to someone like myself. But I kept thinking someday we'd run into each other.

Well, telling that story brought it up in my mind and I googled anew today. He's working in St. Louis (ironic), and he's done quite well and he looks...washed out and drab. Jowly. Seeing that face, I can't escape the fact that I don't know him at all, that he has pretty much been a fictional character in my life. It's like being released from captivity, a captivity that kept me safe. I'm sure he's very happy...no, I'm not sure of that, how can I be? But I hope he's happy, and not sad or drab or washed out.

Not that I was that attractive in them, but I sure am glad that the most recent photos of me online are in flamboyant red wigs. I prefer looking puffy and overmadeup to drab.

I don't advise

....moving via Red Ryder wagon. Oh, sure, they're festive, sturdy, and well-wheeled, but to drag your belongings across three blocks (one the treacherous dog-leg from Larabee to Willow - rich people cars will mow you down) using a children's wagon is a labor-intensive, if quaint, way of getting boxes from point A to point B.

Sadly, it takes lots of trips, and pulling four boxes in a wagon is hard on the arm muscles. (Four is about the limit for a Red Ryder load. Any more and they fall off.)

I'm tired of moving, and I've only barely started. I suppose I feel as if I've been moving since January, when I left my apartment of 3 and a half years. It still feels weird not to go back to Cornelia, although there isn't any there there, as it's been gutted for condos. 3 and 1/2 years is a big commitment for me - it felt like home.

So in January I moved out of there, to house-sit. Then I ended up moving out of the house-sit early (February) to live in a back-room, keeping most of my things in boxes. Then I spent the summer away, with one car load of stuff that I loaded myself, added to over the months, and then re-loaded myself to get back to Chicago. Now, after five weeks out of a suitcase, I am finally moving my boxes into my next living space.

Except it isn't mine. It's another house-sitting situation. Which is great but I'm getting antsy for something that is mine.

Have I mentioned I hate money? I should tell you that although I don't regret being an actor, there are days when I would like to haul off and slap every man, woman, or child who professes to be jealous of my pursuit of an artistic career and then trots off to the house they own, or perhaps drives there in a working vehicle they own, or, really worst yet, buys me dinner because they make more money than I do. I can EAT, people, I just can't make a down payment on a condo right now! Geez!

Regret is a luxury of those who have earned enough money to sit down and rest.

I should start replying, Wow, it's funny you say you wish you'd followed your dream, because I really wish I'd sold out and had a pension plan in place right now! Well, you might not feel artistically fulfilled but your insurance will cover the therapy to talk it through, don't you think?

Good question, Ms. Meisenbach

I made it back to Chicago. Hurrah! It was a long drive (I started at 4 pm on Monday and dropped the car off at the airport at 5 pm the following day) and I still feel tired. Suddenly the summer seems to have been great fun! Of course it was fun, it just had other elements that were not so fun. As the lovely habermas gal commented, why DO some people feel the need to exclude others?

Ironically, I feel that as a communications specialist, habermas gal ought to have a better answer than mine. Mine, however, is that the people I was up against are small people with small destinies, and they throw their weight around because summer stock, and that particular company, is the only place they can. Honestly, I felt like I was in high school. Curiously, some of these people had gone to high school together. Or perhaps that isn't so curious.

I enjoyed performing, and I think we produced watchable productions, but it was no Broadway, despite what the aged fans purported. But a few of our actors have been working there every summer for 10-20 years. They're from the area, they grew up there, and they either don't have the gumption or don't have the talent to go on to better things. They've made that theatre their playground, and when a batch of really talented, new folks come wheeling in, with little interest in how things have "Always" been done, it causes some raised hackles.

The funny thing, I think, is that all the tension and nastiness and caste-building was unnecessary. If you've been working somewhere 20 years, and are clearly in charge, you don't NEED to be nasty - you already run everything! You can afford to be nice! Also, I'd think you'd welcome a change from the "traditions" of a place if you've been stuck doing the same thing for 20 years. I figure the only way you can tell the summers apart is to enjoy the new people that are there, not alienate them. What a waste.

I'm interested to find I've already blocked out a lot of the nastiness in my memory. I'm already nostaglic for the summer. I'm pleased it has finally ended, but I gained a lot of valuable experience.

We had a cabaret performance on the final Saturday, with an hour of solos and duets and some group numbers and then a 30-40 minute recap of the season, a medley, if you will. It was sold out, and full of people who really had seen most of the shows throughout the season. As much as I resented the setup (really??? you need us to rehearse something EVEN NOW at the end of the season?? Even now, after putting up 7 shows you NEED us to rehearse all day for a 1 hour cabaret??? REALLYYY????), in the end I truly enjoyed the performance. We sat around the stage for the medley, and people cheered for their favorite numbers from the season, and while other people sang solos, I had a chance to really look at the audience. From the audience's point of view, here was a group of young, attractive people, singing their hearts out, and we'd been theirs all summer. We'd been dancing and singing and acting up there just to entertain them, show after show.

And suddenly, I realized how glamourous it - we - must look to certain people. We do go on to Broadway and national tours and theatre in the cities, we go on to tv and films on occasion as well. And if that happens, these people, who watched the shows so faithfully, have a little ownership in that success, a little grin to themselves that they could see it back before anyone else could. It was a lovely moment for me to realize that through cleaning the bathrooms and putting up with foolish people and being away from my other life, what I was performing meant something to the audience.

It made me happy. So that's what I'm choosing to remember.

Sooo close

I'm tipsy and almost done. Man, I want to think the best of people, but there are a couple of people here who truly act like bitches! The sad part is how great most of these people are and how a few insecure, sad people have made us feel unwelcome. We performed in a cabaret today and so many people asked afterwards whether we would be coming back next year. I hardly knew how to tell them that a couple of our fellow cast members had made us feel so unwelcome that it would be stupid to subject ourselves to such treatment again!

So, I'm drinking through my alcohol because...well, we're almost done, so I have to use it up, right? Heh.

I really have to fall into bed now. But I have a feeling that when I've finally finished and left here, I might have to do an expose in blog form to work through the shit that has been piled upon me this summer.

Tomorrow is our last day. I'm pleased. I've been looking forward to it. But there are people I'll miss, so it is bittersweet.

G'night for now.

It's a Wig

My hair wouldn't do that of it's own accord. The odd, deer-in-headlights look on my face is because an audience member just flashed me. No, no, just poor freeze technique.

Many thanks to Sarah and Jackie for checking out performances!!

Nearing the end

The last few weeks have been packed with all sorts of events and emotions. Guys and Dolls ended, and we lost all the people who had to go back to school in one big, depressing sweep. There are a good many people left, but it's much quieter and very weird without the rest of "us". I got to move dressing rooms, which has been great, but has made me dwell on the weird position of not belonging that I was both forced into and created this summer. I was in the "principal" dressing room for the rest of the summer, and everyone else in there had been at this theatre before, and I always felt I didn't belong, as a "first-year" and I think the old-timers meant for me to feel that way. It wouldn't be "tadition" if I was made to feel welcome. These girls have created a caste system, and I was of another caste.

In the meantime, time was passing in the other dressing room and a certain camraderie was developed that I wasn't a part of either. I've moved in there now, and it is a great relief because I can feel I belong there, but I'm still not part of the world they created. I probably won't get to be in the last two weeks. I wish I didn't feel it - I wish I was impervious. Instead I feel isolated, and I wonder what mistakes I made to foster that isolation. How much of it is me, and how much is the situation?

So I abandoned the bike and I'm hitching rides instead, and I've been drinking and staying up with folks more. There's a nice camaraderie of the left behind - we have to stick together because we're the only ones left. I'm trying to enjoy the time we have left.

Gigi opens today. I do very little in the show. I have more scene changes than scenes. Really - I'm in four scenes, I change the scenery 11 times. But I feel like this is what everyone else did for me when I was in South Pacific, and I'm enjoying paying my dues a bit. After Cats, I just am happy to be IN the show, not sitting on the sidelines.

All right, I'm off to sweep and mop the theatre....

Echoes of Sleeping Beauty

We open Sleeping Beauty on Friday morning, and as of today I've had three rehearsals. Ha! All the kid's shows get shoved in as time permits, and it hasn't really permitted at all, so we are scrambling to learn everything, which means all night I've been hearing people frantically practicing their lines all around the house. It's funny - in the living room one of the fairies is creaking out her lines in a fake British accent, and upstairs I can hear the bad fairy ranting and raving.

It makes me sigh a little, the fake British accent - not because I'm a snob, no, but because I had one myself, and now I think two in one show might be too much. The other fairy isn't entirely aware how she's producing said accent - she just spits the words out in this voice, which to be fair is funny, and would be classic if she could hold on to the fake accent at all times.

I'm sure the same can be said for mine, but since I do know how I'm making it, I can remove it, which makes me sad. I guess if I'm honest: I thought it sounded funny, but hers sounds odd, and since I have to admit I'm trying the same tactic (a funny fussy voice), there's nothing to convince me my own accent isn't equally inexplicable and spotty.

I'm sucking my teeth at her a bit because she keeps complaining about doing a kid's show, although this is her first, and MY SECOND. Yeah, it's a bummer, because almost all the rehearsal comes during dinner and all your free time disappears. But we've all had to do it, and some of us more than once (and one poor girl more than twice).

Guys and Dolls continues. I clocked it - I spend 16 and a half minutes on stage during a 2 hour 50 minute show. It's restful, and that has advantages - when else do I have time to learn my kid's show lines? Every so often I have a twinge of ego, because it is disheartening to get good parts for three shows in a row and then get nothing for the last three shows. I don't mind, overall, and politically I'm thrilled to fade into the woodwork, but of course underneath there are those niggling doubts: did they decide I wasn't that good?

Case in point: I am barely in Gigi at all, the final show. I think it may be that I do not sing a single note in the show, which I find funny. I love the director and I don't resent being there, and I am happy to watch other people have a chance to shine. The only role I could feasibly have been cast in was the 50 year old grandmother, and since I have already done a series of older women this season, I don't feel I lost out. But there are regrets, and I do wonder on occasion what politics or just plain judgment of my talent there might have been.

On the other hand, I can pretty much drink for the next three weeks, since I don't need to memorize more than a handful of lines.

It's much easier to be here knowing the end is in sight. I have gotten calls to audition for theatres and commercial gigs in the last month or so, and that reminds me I have something to go back to, and in many ways, something better. This is not the apex of my career. Knowing that, perhaps I should get some sleep.

Long Ride Home

Long days. I'm having more fun, in between times where I get really tired of being here and a little depressed at the politics. More on that next time, I'm too fretful about it today, and have talked about it enough in other parts of my life.

A little healthy melancholy creeps across me, as I'm listening to Patty Griffin's Long Ride Home, a beautiful folk song that I sang in snatches to myself for years without realizing it is about a funeral.

The lovely boyfriend comes to visit tomorrow. It is worrisome. I tend to be a very out-of-sight, out-of-mind person (much like a two-year-old, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist), and we've been apart for nearly two months, so the relationship feels very fuzzy right this moment. The last two weeks of phone conversations have felt very distant and odd, and I have great hopes that being physically together will magically fix all of that, though of course "magically" is always a dangerous word if you want to live a life based in reality.

Being away from a partner is tricky, certainly. I can't pretend to know what Hollywood life is really like, but I suspect the mere fact of living away from your partner contributes to most Hollywood breakups. How do actors go on tour? How on earth did sailors go away to sea these last hundred years? How do military spouses do it?

(now I'm listening to Aretha Franklin's "Dr. Feelgood", which disperses any gloom)

It's getting towards the end of my own tour of duty - We're opening our next to last show. I play General Cartwright in Guys and Dolls, which plays for two weeks, and then we do Gigi for two weeks, and then I skedaddle for the Midwest and sanity again.
Guys and Dolls is....well, it's partly fun, mostly idle, and somewhat dreadful. In a three hour show (ANOTHER ONE??!) I think I clock in ten minutes of time onstage. That's it. But then again, I am enjoying all ten minutes - it's very liesurely, and I know what I'm doing with them. I can be freer and less worried about this bit part than something larger. And it's nice to be IN the show again, after Cats. I feel useful again.

We lose all the college people after this show, and a few others as well, which makes me sad. I do bitch about these people, but I like them, and have that sort of soldierly comradeship you find among fellow battlers. It's hard to lose some. A lot of them live in NYC as well, and they will be seeing each other in the coming year, whereas I head elsewhere and lose out a bit. I don't know that I would go to weekly reunions, but there are people I hate to lose track of.

It's getting late -we teched Guys and Dolls more quickly than any other show, but it is much more boring and more poorly performed than any of our other shows. Politics have given the 4 lead roles away to two sheerly bad actors, one fairly good actor poorly cast, and one very fun actor who just can't do the work of all four, no matter how hard he tries. It's a little hard to watch some of the scenes - even the costume people just want to sleep through the runthroughs. Our director is a dancer, and yet the choreography is boring. So actors sleepwalk through the scenes, and dancers meander through the songs, and the whole thing is a waste of a really fun play.

I do have an amazing costume, which I wear for probably a minute thirty seconds onstage (one minute in the opening, and thirty seconds in the end - I promise I am not exaggerating), and then an fairly hideous costume for the other 8 1/2 minutes of my time. The amazing costume includes sunglasses, slinky black dress, a turban, and long black gloves. The hideous costume involves an elastic waistband. I don't mind it, really.

I'll see if I can get photos. You'll see...

Addendum

There are a few things you can't see in the Cinderella photo below.

1) I drew in a unibrow for my character Gladiola, the younger stepsister. It didn't quite meet in the middle but it got closer everytime we did the show.

2) I performed the show with a lisp. "sThinderella!"

3) That's a wig.

Photo test

I keep trying to put photos on here. Thought I'd try again. This should be me in Cinderella, playing a stepsister trying on the shoe. Ironically, the girl playing Cinderella has the same shoe size as I do, so her shoe does actually fit. I have to "Act" as if it does not. It's hard work, these shows!

It turns out that although it is hard to get up early to do the children's shows, they are SO MUCH FUN!

Restoration

Thanks for the comments, concern, emails, and presents contributed to the Save Elsbeth From Despair Campaign. I am happy to report that after Two Entire Days Off with my parents feeding me and being highly entertaining, my body has packed up and refused to cooperate, but my mind is much clearer and more cheerful.

I can appreciate my fellow actors, make small talk, crack jokes, and go back to enjoying myself instead of being Ms. Grumpy Pants. Today I sat in my corner while everyone else put on gobs of makeup and hummed a little tune of thanks that I don't have to be in Cats. Hurrah! I was able to purge a lot of the anger the other night making the list in the last post, so for everyone who has expressed concern, keep in mind that if I can vent my anger and bitterness here, usually I can leave it behind me.

My Mom and Dad came to visit, which was a fantastic aid to soul repair. First, they are the cutest ever, especially after 41 years of marriage and 10 days of a road trip. All sorts of petty arguments to be witnessed there, let me tell you. But they so clearly can't do without each other, that it is sort of sweet. They had great family stories (I've been missing weddings and births galore), they make good companions, and while they don't always agree with everything I say, they always love me. My mother made a birthday cake and brought it across five states in a cooler that had to be re-iced every day.

Also, my mother takes great pride in being s Southerner outside of the South, and often chats away with perfect strangers in a bid, she says, to make sure everyone in the country thinks Southerners are kooky. We had a hit and miss success with this: the tour guide from the Martin Van Buren house was from Georgia, and did all sorts of things to impress fellow compatriots - unlocking the orginal 1797 dutch door, letting my mother take pictures, offering to email photos. However, my mother's friendliness in a shop later led the woman inside to unburden herself. I could tell you all about this shopkeeper's marriage, divorce, recent car wreck, etc.

I won't.

We also went exploring in the beautiful countryside. It is nice to spend time with my parents and remember that I have certain beliefs because I was raised by them. I would happily spend a fortune to buy an antique sleigh bedstead like the ones we saw in Martin Van Buren's house but an expensive Coach bag or jewelry would be a waste of money on me.

Now I just need a good night's sleep and a few very small healthy meals, and I might be a person again, instead of a complete bore.

Oh, and my Dad had a great addition to my list when someone says, hey, you're not in Cats:

"Sorry, I've already been in one kid's show."

Meorow.

Just to clear up any confusion, I'm considering getting a tattoo (you win, SteveMatt) on my forehead that says:

NO, I'M NOT IN CATS

I am NOT in the musical Cats that is currently showing at this theatre where I'm working. I'm attempting to have a good attitude about it. I was sad back in Junewhen I discovered I wasn't cast in it, for a couple of reasons. My parents won't get to see me in a show here (they can only visit during Cats, having missed the three nice roles I was given in the first three shows). I feel pretty stupid sitting in the pit, just singing along with the people who are actually in the play. I feel pretty useless.

I having been trying to master these negative demons (see last post) and look on the bright side:

1) I don't have to wear the Cats costume, a cotton unitard under a spandex unitard painted with stripes and with strips of knitted "fur" snapped into place at intervals, and a wig of synthetic hair in odd colors.

2) It's much more fun to watch Cats than actually have to dance it myself. I'd be certain I'm pull a muscle from trying too hard.

2a) It's very fun to watch my co-workers in Cats - they are really pretty amazing.

3) Come on, it's Cats!! How ridiculous is it that they're doing Cats?!?! Thank god I'm not in it! There's no plot and the music is derivative (if frighteningly catchy)!

And various other justifications to make myself feel better for not being in it.

But, people, really, people, do I HAVE to endure the patron comments? Do people who see the whole season HAVE to make conversation with me about how I'm not in the show? Don'tcha think it could be a sore point? Maybe you could go lightly? Be a little tactful?

Apparently not. As I said in the last post, our photographer's already had a go at me. But one's not enough!!! After I responded to his "so, you're nothing" comment by saying that might not be the most tactful way of putting it, he greets me now, probably permanently, with a new nickname, "Hey, it's Nothin'!"

And now the folks who work in our Friday/Saturday coffeehouse are on the bandwagon. A nice older gentleman stops me and says, "So, you didn't get a part in this one at all, then?"

*sigh*

"Oh. My. God! You are right, sir! I have been just offstage in a unitard for the last THREE nights of the show and I just could not figure out why I never heard a cue to enter!"

or, maybe

"No, actually, I play ALLL the cats in the show, different makeup every time, you know, but they wanted to give credit to some other people, make them feel needed."

Or

"I have been wondering why my butt hurts - ooooo, I see, it's because I spend the show SITTING on it!"

or

"Sorry, no, I WAS in the show, but I made everyone else look bad, so they took me out for the good of the whole."

Or even

"It was against copyright law for me to be in it. Oops. Shouldn't have said anything. Oh, no - you hear that siren!? I shouldn't have told you!" *in a flash of smoke, she disappears*


But in the end, all I've got is:

NO!! ALL RIGHT? NO! I AM NOT IN THE SHOW. APPARENTLY I AM A TERRIBLE DANCER AND THE DIRECTOR WOULD RATHER NEVER SEE ME DANCE AGAIN. YOU HAPPY NOW? WHY NOT ASK ME HOW MUCH I WEIGH OR IF I EVER GET MY EYEBROWS PLUCKED? WHY NOT ASK WHY I'M NOT MARRIED SINCE I'M SO OLD ALREADY? I GET IT! I'M NOT IN THE SHOW! I NOTICED! I'VE BEEN SITTING IN THE CORNER TRYING TO BE SMALL ENOUGH THAT YOU WON'T EVEN SEE ME AT ALL, IS THAT ENOUGH?

*Sigh* Days like today, I think about packing it in. Maybe people will start reading my blog in droves, and I'll become a cultural phenomenon and I'll get a book deal out of it. Damn that Julie/Julia Project, creating false hopes.

There's always the lottery for that.

CATS!!!!

Well, I'll be damned. As of tomorrow, we really will open a production of Cats. I am stunned it has come together so well, although my vantage point is somewhat limited. I am not in the show at all, but an ever-changing group of people are singing off-stage at any given time. "Pit-singers", we're called, but we are not actually in the pit at all - there's no room. We're set up in the lobby, where we have: 1) a microphone to sing into - the sound guy mixes us in with the rest of the audio, 2) a monitor so we can hear what's going on onstage, 3) a tv screen with a view of our music director to watch for tempos and cues, and 4) a tv screen with a view of the stage.

When the stage lights are on, all the colors get washed out and everyone on stage looks like a white blob, so it's hard to tell how well the show is actually going, but you can get a feel for it. We've been teching the show for two days (Tuesday from 2pm to 1:30 am, today from 1pm to 5pm before an 8 pm show), and until this evening, we had never run it all the way through without stopping. I thought it might be a train wreck, but it was pretty amazing, at least as far as the white blobs go.

It leaves me with mixed feelings. Yeah, it would have been nice to be in the show. It feels awkward, being here as an actor but apparently being a poor enough dancer that they couldn't find any place to use me in the show. Well, I think the decision also involved the postage stamp that is the stage and how only a certain number of people fit on it when dancing, as well as the ornate and extensive costumes in the show and the impossibility of the shop making even more than they had calculated. But also, I'm not a very good dancer.

So, I've wallowed in a little self-pity about that over the last week or so. Yesterday and today I found the silver lining, which is that I DO finally get a moment to breathe. I have been reading David Copperfield during tech. I did my laundry during the dinner break. I don't have to wear a fuzzy, furry, knitted costume in 90 degree weather. I don't have to apply intense, complicated makeup to look like a cat.

Of course, I get comments like this (from the theatre's photographer): "So, you really are nothing in the show, hunh?"

I can weigh that against the fact that a couple of people tonight said they missed seeing me in this show after the last three, so those kind of comments equal out.

I guess it doesn't matter. I am NOT in the show, no matter whether I feel happy about it or depressed, so I will, as far as possible, choose to be happy.

The really fun part has been the opportunity to sit outside of the show and watch it, and to watch so many of my great co-workers being amazing in it. I may wish I could have been in it somewhere, but it is great to see some people who have been in the background playing small roles suddenly spring into a full life. I have a renewed respect for everyone I work with. Even a couple of people I had secretly decided were terrible have suddenly become incredible with a leotard and some fancy makeup. They are, god forgive me, in it to win it. I'd love to be part of it, but for the moment, I will take the extra rest that comes with singing a handful of numbers and helping with a few quick changes. It is partly a relief to relax into being unimportant.

And hey, I'll have more time to write posts! And they'll be about Cats!

A Glass of Whine

Sometimes, I have discovered, a drink really DOES make it all right. Stunning, isn't it? I have been in a tailspin recently, as we're rehearsing Cats, which (see below) I am not in. I expected to at least get some time off, but it was not to be. I am assigned to understudy someone, so I have been at all the rehearsals anyway. Except that I am in the current kids show.

I'm not sure I can even describe the isanity that is trying to rehearsal and put on a children's show on TOP of the 8 show per week and rehearse the next one scehdule. But I can tell you that we lose a series of dinner breaks because we're having rehearsal. The theatre then buys us pizza as recompense. Then you get the run up: on Thursday, you miss rehearsal from 1pm to 4pm to do all your technical stuff. Then that evening, after a three hour performance, you slap on your kids show costumes and do your dress rehearsal - a dress rehearsal that doesn't usually begin until midnight. THEN, when you finally finish the dress and gets notes, and drag home to bed, you have to get up and be at the theatre at 10 am for an 11 am show. You then rehearse from 12:30 to 6, and go into your hour call for the Friday show, which ends by about 11 pm. Then on Saturday, you do the kid's show again, rehearse 12:30 to 4, and go straight to call for the first of your two shows on a Saturday - a 5pm and an 8:30pm. So Saturday you're called at 10 am and you're there until midnight, a day full of fourteen hours of rehearsing and performing. Then what is funny is that on Sunday, when you finally don't have a kid's show, you actually still have rehearsal at 10 am, and your day runs all the way through strike, which for actors lasts until 1 am.

You can try the math any way you want, but it's not really possible to get enough sleep on that schedule to make it possible to get through a rehearsal of Cats.

Last night I got back to the incredibly hot house at about 1:30 am (we have no air conditioning, and we've had a series of 90 degree days - it's hot), someone had made margaritas for a birthday girl (not me, I didn't tell anyone when it was my birthday, a stupid move, let me confess), and offered me one.

I had been on the phone the entire trip home, crying about how I lack any kind of talent and no one likes me and I should just give everything up because what I've learned is I am incapable of being entertaining. "Oh," I sniffled at last, as I came up to the steps, "They made margaritas."

The wise boyfriend, a better drinker than I, said, "Go drink one. Now. Get off the phone and go drink a big one. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

An hour later, things were looking rosy, and indeed, I newly loved everyone in the house, especially the birthday girl who had me polish off her drink, too.

Apparently, much of my anguish over the years comes from not drinking often enough. And the lovely boyfriend may be right after all - this may be the summer I learn to drink.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Well, Fiddler is done and packed away, and we are on to Funny Girl. The Funny Girl in question has come in just to do this one show, and is a peach of a nice person, open and kind and very excited to be doing the role. Also, she can tap her face off, which is not as usable in the show as one might wish, but she and her tap partner do a really jaw-dropping tap challenge in the second act, in a number called Rat-tat-tat-tat (appropriate, no?). I have been sharing a dressing room with two people who are long-time favorites at the theatre, and have felt very solidly out of place between their endless stories of the past and bizarre rituals and stretching-back-to-high-school history together. I'm thrilled the funny girl is moving in - she has also been at this theatre before, but she never makes me feel like "One of these things is not like the other...." She just treats me like a person.

The dressing room is a volatile place for me, because I do feel I don't belong there. It's the "star" dressing room, and was made into a sort of in-club that I don't have any interest in being associated with - I'd rather be mixed in with all the rest of the "first-year" girls, in what I have come to think of as my place. Sure, I did have a couple of big roles and could use the space for a show or two, but now I really would like to be with my own kind.

It's interesting - the politics here are probably going to get out of hand soon. I hesitate to write about this, because I'm working so hard to keep my opinion to myself. If I were discovered hanging it out on the internet, it would be unfortunate. I think one of these girls acts like a high schooler, instead of an adult several years out of college. She's created a group that she clearly sees as the in-group (those in the know), out of the people who have been at the theatre in past years. They save each other seats at dinner, they go out to dinner together, etc. My perception (possibly wrong) is that the high schooler needs to control this group and who does and doesn't belong, to make up for her lack of success in other areas of her life. You've all spent time with personalities like this - the small person who throws their weight around to prove how important they are.

Up to now, this in-group concept has had little effect, because those of us in the out-group, with a very very few exceptions, have pretty much ignored it and gotten on with hanging out with each other.

But here comes trouble: with Cats rehearsals beginning, we add two more people who have been here before, people who will land firmly in the "in"-group. Which will make that group much bigger and I have a bad bad feeling will change the dynamic into more of a tug-of-war.

To me, you'd get more out of a summer if you could start afresh with the new company each time, build new memories, use the fresh blood to give you new ideas. But then, I try not to shore up how I feel about myself by making other people feel smaller - that just seems a waste of time. (Not to sound high and mighty - I'm certain I've done that in my time, but I TRY not to.)

So, I'm afraid of the new group dynamic on its way. In the meantime, I plan to enjoy Funny Girl and my new warm and gracious dressing room companion, and then hopefully I can keep my head down and my mouth shut through Cats. Maybe then I can escape the summer alive!

A Quickie

Much better mood today, but as a side note to yesterday's post (and by the way, I have always truly loved Becky Meisenbach and owe her a huge email, which I hope to rectify soon...), I came up with a mini list.

CATCH PHRASES I HOPE NEVER TO HEAR AGAIN AFTER THIS SUMMER

(keep in mind most of my fellow workers are college-aged)

1. "He's in it to win it."

This is usually referring to someone's acting. What, exactly, are we trying to "win"? Me, I was trying to tell a story, I wasn't aware we were running a race of some kind. And in other uses, why on earth would you be in it without wanting to win it?

2. Anything being "fierce".

Really. Very little in summer stock musical theatre is that "fierce."

3. "I'll cut you."

Really, does anyone warrant "cutting" when your offense is that you might forget to hang up your apron or shawl?
(As a side note, I still enjoy a good "The Mailman's Got a Knife, He'll Cut You." Much more original.)

And that's enough for tonight. I'll be back tomorrow after losing my home and two of my daughters in Fiddler on the Roof.

Day Off

So we get one day off every two weeks. Always a Monday - it was yesterday. And it just made me incredibly crabby, because when you realize how short a day is, it's depressing.

I like acting as a primary profession, don't get me wrong, but I'm finding it difficult to eat, sleep, breathe, and choke nothing but this theatre and these people. To have just one day to "yourself" and to be dependent on someone who has a car to do something entertaining with that day gets pretty dreary.

I miss my autonomy. I am supposed to be a grown up, able to make my own decisions, but I have little power here. I'm dependent on a ride for anything more than getting to and from the theatre (and even there I need a ride when there's a downpour!), nearly all of my time is allotted throughout a day, and because I live with 11 women in a decrepid old house, it is impossible to keep my living space clean. Neat, sure. Clean, not possible. We don't even have a vacuum cleaner in the house. Of course, I live in the only carpeted room.

So today I am dissatisfied with everything and everyone and I've been snappy throughout the day. All the things you can imagine a gaggle of actors doing have been PISSING ME OFF. Let's have a bullet list for a moment, yes?

-People listening to musicals on their earphones, but singing aloud to them, because of course, you clearly want to hear what they are hearing, which is why they are wearing HEADPHONES

-People telling me how good I am at playing old women. Thanks, really. When I'm 60 I'll actually have work. Great.

-People who can't stop talking - often about something I clearly have no interest in. One girl took 15 minutes to convince me her sorority was the best ever and not like any other sorority and she was very Important in it. I AM 31 YEARS OLD. I WILL NOT BE JOINING YOUR SORORITY AND I DON'T CARE HOW IMPORTANT YOU ARE IN IT.

-The college kids who have no idea life exists outside of college. Someone was all hot and bothered the other day about what shows the college was doing this upcoming year, and I tried to explain that in 5 or 10 years, none of them would be able to REMEMBER what shows they did in college, but it's impossible to convey that the world might be bigger than that.

-The 20 year olds who have already planned their wedding. Sure, it could work, sure, they could be with their current partner forever. It's possible. But likely? No. You know why? Because you probably haven't even begun to know who you are yet.

-The tiny, beauty pagent winner who has a constant diet of sugar. Tonight, chocolate chip pancakes. I have enough trouble not hating her because she's beautiful - throw in the parade of things I like eating but shouldn't (she eats them without a change to her seemingly surgically altered figure - I don't that it has been, but that's how stupid perfect her tiny little body is), and honestly, I am thinking more and more about snapping her body like a dry twig by sitting on it.

-I am really over the fact that we only have one working toliet in a house of 11, soon to be 12. The plumber came to fix one of the two we had, but found that the floor was so rotten that until the floor was repaired, he couldn't replace the toliet. That was last week, and we've had a big gaping hole in the floor ever since. We covered it with a garbage bag because it was unsettling to see the basement through the floor.

-All the people reading who aren't making smart-alecy, Elizabeth-you-know-you're-right comments! I'm stuck here, people, if you have a minute, put your two cents in and say hello! (I know who some of you are, too...)

I should go to bed. Another day, another day to self-medicate the irritation with chocolate and Cheez-its.

Daaaarrrllliiinnnngggg

I think actors are funny. Now, I know I'm technically one of them, and so to class myself outside the bounds seems self-delusional, but I do make a distinction between actors, and "Ac-TORS" (stress on the second syllable). For me, there's a difference between someone who works as an actor and tries to do it well, and the thousands of different combinations of diva and look-at-meism from another kind of actor. I've been lucky in Chicago to work with a lot of the former, people who genuinely want to tell a story. I work with both types here.

Most of the time, I don't mind. Ac-TORS are funny, as they are usually revealing every insecurity they have with every word. The part that has bothered me in the last month is that the people I work with are lavish in their compliments, but I can't trust them. They mean well, but do they actually mean anything at all? I've no idea. I doubt they even know. Much of it is a knee-jerk reaction to working alongside each other - the compliments are because I'm standing there, and they want to be nice. I try not to do the same, I try to say nice things to the people I truly am impressed with, but I have fallen prey to it as well. Sometimes you're stuck in a room with someone and not telling them they are fabulous makes you look like a jerk.

I'd prefer to hear nothing to hearing suspect, possibly empty praise, only because the praise confuses me. I had 10 days of rehearsal. I'm turning out passable performances, not brilliant ones. The constant diet of "wow, you're so talented" bugs me because I know those comments are empty calories, and however much I try to ignore them, there doesn't seem to be much sturdier fare on offer: I don't know if there is anyone here whose comments I could actually trust.

I should be grateful - at least I'm being complimented consistently. If they thought I was dreadful, there would be a suspicous silence. I do get useful criticism on rare occasions as well.

Interestingly, we had a scathing review of Fiddler. The reviewer was a woman who publishes her reviews online, and who had mostly positive things to say about South Pacific (which I though overall was a worse production than Fiddler). She hated our Tevye, thought none of us managed to be "ethnic" enough, and complained we all seemed to be acting in different plays. Teyve was a standup comedian a la Bob Hope, I was playing Golde as Mother Courage, our Lazar Wolf playing in a realistic style and the rest of the children were turning in shiny Broadway performances. It's hard to take this reviewer seriously, a woman who will make such statements as "First and worst don’t rhyme for nothing." In a completely different review, mind you. But somehow, I think she may be right about Fiddler's shortcomings! So it confuses me how she can see the show and hate it, but all we hear from audience members is how good we are.

I guess it's a question of audiences. Our audiences are old. Exceptionally old. And we are churning out a season of live movies for them. Someone backstage complained about not having originality in a show, and I couldn't help saying, "That's not what this theatre is about. That's just not the gig." We're here to give people a live version of something they've already seen. It makes them happy.

And I'm left wondering, is the fact that we're keeping audiences happy enough?

No, really, he's on the Roof, he's a Fiddler

We're already opening Fiddler on the Roof, and it has been quite a ride. Our director, who continues his frightening resemblance to Corky Sherwood in Waiting for Guffman, has been an odd and perniskety guide. The tricky part is that most of what he says is most likely a complete and utter lie, but his direction, though confusing, seems right on target. He'll gesticulate:"I've done 23 productions of Oliver - about ten years ago, I got a call to play, once again, the Artful Dodger [he would have been 50 ish then] and I said, there is not enough clown white to pack under these eyes to do that anymore." And he will give seemingly conflicting advice. Last night: "You don't need to add a character walk for any of these people. Just walk." Tonight: "They've got to be working people, they should walk like they've been working all day. The posture is here [he hunches over]."

Also, he tends to tell you something as if you've been doing it wrong, except he's just never bothered to tell you that before. Night before last I waited around on an entrance because, unbeknownst to me, he'd cut my cue line. Handy to know that, really.

That's the frustrating part - we've had 10 days of rehearsal, all while playing another show, usually twice a day, and tech was nearly the first time we'd ever run the show. So tonight at dress rehearsal when we were doing the show for really the second time ever, still grappling with costume changes and props and just getting things on and off stage, I got a ton of notes about detailed scene work I should be fixing.

But the kicker is, I should be fixing it! It's so frustrating, I don't actually have enough time to absorb all the things I'm being asked to do, I'm barely hanging on, and I feel worried and sad about all the moments I can't yet make work. I wish I could be happy I made it to the stage at all, but I'm not built like that.

I am grateful for several things. One, with the two week schedule we have, there is a scant four days in which we are only concentrating on one show - these are those days, and I am passionately grateful. We start Funny Girl on Friday. I'm also grateful South Pacific is over, over, over, and I never have to be touched by my creepy co-star ever again. Hurrah. I hate to hate him so much, but he was sleazy as well as a bad actor, and I'm happy to be rid of him. The older man playing Tevye is actually really lovely and has been a great joy. It's true, I don't kiss him at all, and that's part of the relief, but I think I would find him easier to kiss because he's at least a nice man trying to do his job well, without endless extraneous comments. I'm equally grateful to be feeling semi-well again. There's still a lot of phlegm of a morning, but at least my throat isn't sore. Singing Nellie twice a day after long rehearsals was wearing me down.

It also occurs to me I'm grateful to be here at all. Now that the evil co-star from hell has gone, I work with nice people putting on shows. Fiddler is a lovely show, great music and a moving story, and it's a pleasure to be doing what I love, even if I still feel I'm doing a sub-par job.

And with that, I head into opening Show Number 2! After tomorrow, two down, four to go!

Fiddler on the Roof

Grrr. Or Yaaayy. Depending on your point of view. The next show is Fiddler on the Roof. I've been cast as Golde, the mother, wife of Tevye (the man who wishes he were rich). This made me quail utterly, for three reasons:

1) I have no free time whatsoever. This woman talks a LOT. When exactly am I going to learn these lines?

2) I am playing Nellie for 8 shows a week while rehearsing Fiddler. Today, for instance, after 4 hours of music rehearsals and 2 separate 3 hour shows of SP, my throat is fried.

3) SSSIIIIIGGGGGHHHHH. I was soo looking forward to shucking off this ridiculous older man playing Emile who is such a dreadful dreadful actor and such an irritating man. And now I am saddled with the next older man, who at least seems much nicer and more talented. I'm told he has notoriously bad breath, but I don't think Golde and Tevye ever actually kiss. It looks, so far, like a much better deal. But there's no getting around the fact that I'm trading one old man for another.


In other news, I ended up in a disturbing conversation today with a different bizarre cast member. I made a comment that he wrongly interpreted as a compliment (it was merely a comment), and he felt duty bound to return the compliment and started telling me that his friend came to see the show and completely bought into the romance between myself and the older man. He says the older man talks in the dressing room about how great I am, which led to "Bob" telling me that when someone feels something in real life, it makes the onstage romance so much more believable.

UUUGGGHHHH. I cannot begin to express how creepy I find the implication that my fellow actor has any excess feeling for me. Kill me now. I want to find more charity in my heart, but when I allow it, I AHBOR that man. And he's telling people in the dressing room how easy it is to look into my eyes....I'm appalled.

Best to stop thinking about it.

By the way, I made a massive error. When I found out I was Golde, I had a minor fit, trying to figure out how I was going to handle learning the lines. This led to the stage manager taking me aside to make sure I was all right, and me generally feeling like a fool. Clearly it's a nice opportunity, and all I did was whine? Sometimes I am stupid like rock.

We met the Fiddler director today, and that made me heave another large internal sigh. I still wish I were just in the company and could escape his attention. He is short, in his sixties, gay, Jewish, and apparently a pathological liar. When he talks, you think you're seeing a cut-rate version of a Broadway gay, high-strung choreographer. His speech to the company today was strewn with highly suspicious embellishments and pointless condescending "advice". He claims his bar mitzvah was held at the Wailing Wall and 100 family members flew over to attend. He claims to have been the actual Fiddler on the roof in a production directed by Jerome Robbins. He tells us that we are getting paid to do what we would do for free, and being rewarded by applause. People with 8 figure bonuses never get that, he says. (I don't think that's true.) If you want to know who you are, look at the people who love you, but if you want to know if you're good, look at the people who respect you. (I'm not sure that's exactly true either, but it does sound nice - like he's got an aphorism notebook somewhere.)

I spent the whole time rolling my eyes. Clearly, there's no room for anything in the room except this guy's ego. I'll let you know how I manage to survive. Or if.

Photo is from the show (if the upload works) - me as Nellie (in Honey Bun) with the rest of the girls who are fabulously dressed, and I hope will all play leads before the summer is over.

And just to brag, I date the cleverest, most lovely man ever - he sent me a package of mix CDs - one for each week we've been apart, each themed. Week one has songs about missing someone, week two (opening night) has a dozen songs about roses (including a truly unique version of The Rose by Conway Twitty) and week three is about travel: he's coming to visit.

He's the greatest.

More drama as it unfolds.

Opening of South Pacific

So much happens so quickly when you put a show up in ten days. The last few nights, I have chosen to go to bed at 2 am instead of updating here, but here are some highlights I'll have to abbrevaiate (tonight I'm staying up an extra 30 minutes for this!):

We have one house member, who I'll call Lulu, who is utterly, mind-bogglingly young and dim. This girl couldn't find her dishes when we put them in the cupboards. No, really: "Has anyone seen my colander? It was in the drying rack...oh, it's here in the cupboard?" She's only 19, I think, and clearly wants a lot more attention than any of us have the patience to give her. We all want to slap her. During tech, all the girls got into their "playtime" costumes for SP's "wash That Man" number. These costumes are very 40's and very cute: bathing suits with super squared off legs, little patterned tops, one girl has a leopard print belt with matching leopard bandana and sunglasses - completely Hollywood! Everyone looks adorable. Lulu is, I'll grant you, in a pink bathing suit with her hair in two braids, but she was so entranced with this costume that she had the poor taste to say, OUT LOUD, to all the other girls:

"Oh, look! I'm the cute one! I didn't know they were going to make me the cute one!"

I should take bets on how long it will take before someone actually does physically injure her. Some day ask me for my impression of her explaining how she fell off the stage the other day during a dance number.

To change the subject, I am ambivalent to report that the cast list for Cats went up early, and my name appears no where at all upon it. As in, currently, I have no role whatsoever in the show. There are rumors of "pit singers" - I am one of about 4 or 5 company members missing from the cast list, so we're not sure what they'll do with us. I admit, it's a blow. (How clearly can a choreographer put it that your dancing sucks if not to sinply leave you out of a show??) But on the other hand, I don't yet know what kind of nightmare I'll be avoiding by not being in the show. So, the jury's out. More on that two cycles later, when we actually start rehearsing it.

Tomorrow the cast list goes up for the next show: Fiddler on the Roof. I am hoping to have a small role so as to be able to concentrate on Nellie in SP, but we'll see. The rumors have been flying. Our director from SP calls these casting days "Black Fridays" because so many people are disappointed.

SP is open. We did two performances today, the afternoon to an audience even older than I could have imagined. (We have slots for wheelchairs, and we ALWAYS use them. ALWAYS.) Sadly, I think I killed one of the audience in a blackout, while hauling a crate offstage. The show is fine - I feel a little wooden about it, because the guy playing Emile really is not my cup of tea. (Twnety+ years in sales explained a little of that to me - you can imagine.) I want to be good enough to act beyond him, but he gives me very little to play against. Even our director has been heard to say he plays the role like Captain Kirk. He's gotten a lot better, and he still sounds beautiful singing, he's just very condescending, which for me ruins the romance of Nellie and Emile. She says the attraction is that they are the same kind of people - well, if he's busy winking at her and thinking how "cute" she is, it's more like he's looking for a daughter and she's looking for a father. Creepy. I want to be able to think past his performance, but I just can't seem to find the emotional depth I'm looking for. It's all mechanical. Shame. It's not bad, it just lacks life, and as much as these audiences may not notice the difference, I know there is one and wish I could make the leap.

And yes, he does wink at me on stage, despite childishly denying it to our director during notes yesterday. People are crazy here.

I have a ton of good excuses for my mechanical performance: Emile's dreadful, we've only had ten days, blah, blah, blah, but they are excuses. I wish I knew how to get beyond them to a fuller performance. Maybe I'll discover it over the 2 week run.

In the meantime, I need to get some sleep if I have any chance at doing a good show tomorrow. More dish then, and more of the ridiculous backstage snafus that have been going on. Plus, tales of the Turnpike, the dive bar down the road we go to on opening nights. Until then, g'night. Acting advice will be welcomed if it doesn't involve pretending to be a tree.

IV

Our director is incredibly useful and switched on - everyone seems to love him, partly because he is friendly and doesn't take himself or the play too seriously, and partly because his notes are practical: "Make your voice higher there," or "Make sure you plant so you have enough support for that line." He doesn't tell you how to feel, he gives you help on what to DO, which helps shortcut a lot of confusion when you have a whole 10 days to put a show together.

I thought I was the only one getting irritated with the leading man. He's clearly talented, and has a beautiful voice, but he spends so much time apologizing or giving explanations for a mistake that I would love this to be a play in which I slap the man silly. He's always full of wind blown compliments that I just can't take seriously, and on top of the hemming and hawing, adds a lot of useless, "Oh, we'll make it work," and "That's our job, to give you directors what you want!"

For instance, in the middle of a scene, he might break character and turn his head and say, "What's that line? Damn, I can never get that right, I don't know what my problem is. I had it last night, but now it's just gone. Well, I'll get it. That's my job!" Then we can finally continue with the work. EVERY mistake gets some variation of this palaver.

So our director, bless him, mentions today that if we forget something, we should just stay with the moment and call for a line. Great, I think, wonderful. I am not the only person who noticed this. I was sitting nearby when maybe 5 minutes later, we got yet another oh-so-sorry monologue, and I could hear our director mutter under his breath, "God, Sam! Just stay with the damn scene!!!"

It's nice to find you aren't alone in an irritation.

SS III

Why, oh, why, Lord, is this theatre doing Cats? I know, I know, it isn't until later in the season, but still. Have I explained the season? Two weeks each for the following:

South Pacific
Fiddler on the Roof
Funny Girl
Cats (!)
Guys and Dolls
Gigi

Except Cats gets three weeks. THREE weeks of misery - what are they thinking??? Oh, they expect to sell tickets, I'm sure, but I can't be sure it will be worth it even to them...the costume folk began sewing for Cats in April. April. A trillion actors are coming in just for Cats. Ugh.

In other excitement, we've managed to block and choreograph the entire show (South Pacific) in six days - or will if we finish it off tomorrow. Oh, did I mention we're working in the round? The stage is a square surrounded by four banks of seats, each slightly stacked. We fly along, setting up moves and then running scenes over and over to get the moves to sink into our brains. The dance sequences are murder because after the dance call last weekend (see SSII), I feel terribly self-conscious about my dancing, yet I'm forced by the play to dance for seemingly interminable sections by myself. So the worst dancer in this crew is left to her own devices to prance around making an idiot of herself while everyone else just sits back and snickers behind their hands.

My fellow cast members are sweet, actually, they never noticably snicker, and I've heard from several of them that I make an "adorable" Nellie. I'm pleased to hear the compliment, obviously, but we're actors, after all. Truckloads of salt are needed whenever we tell each other anything complimentary:

"Oh Darling, you were wonderful. I couldn't take my eyes off you."
Transalation: I was mesmerized by your true awfulness and why on earth did you get that role when I would have been much better.

"My Precious! You were divine!"
Translation: I can't wait until the dreadful review of you appears in the papers: I plan to clip it out and frame it.

In yet other news, I witnessed a mild meltdown today by our truly lovely hair and wig person, who was both embarassed and tearful at her sudden inability to do my hair for a photo call. "They're gonna yell at me," she sniffled, and it was heart-breaking, really. She seemed so thrown by the situation, when usually she's a brash ball of attitude. I guess the brashness covers the fear of being yelled at - I tried to talk her down, because my hair just didn't seem that important and I hated to see her so upset for a trifle. I guess theatre does attract "dramatic" personalities but gracious, people, we're not doing surgery here.

It's just a show. And it goes up in a week. Eeek!

It is an education to work at this speed. I'll report back after our first run-through...

Summer Stock II

Days one and two are complete, and were completely different. Sometimes you fear the worst and are pleasantly surprised by the outcome. Sometimes you grit your teeth and decide whatever happens, happens, but when it happens, it's horrifying.

Day one. We still weren't very well informed, but we were given some rules, a cast list, scripts and some musical review. It's a start. I was worried about the wordless judging that goes on the first time you hear a lead actor sing his or her role. I'm not above such judging: I will size up whoever is cast in the next show (Fiddler on the Roof), , so I know everyone has their ears open to see if I deserve this, if I should be singing Nellie in South Pacific. I can't lie - it was scary. I can only sound how I sound, I can't make them like or dislike my voice, but I wanted to feel I was good enough to do this. I have been ignoring the fact that this is my first lead role in a musical, ever. I've been in tons of musicals. I've had solos in quite a few of them. I've played the lead in non-musicals. But I've never had a starring role in a musical. I am trying to pretend that fact isn't true, because it will only make me more nervous. I don't want to tell people it's my first lead in a musical because if I say it before the show, it sounds like an excuse, and I think excuses are a waste of time.

Especially beforehand.

So it was my own opinion I was curious to test as well. When I sang, would I sound good enough to deserve to play this role?

Happily, I can report I did. I sound pretty good, and while of course other people sound just as good and sometimes better, I'm pleased overall with the singing. I sound ok, I have pretty good control over what's coming out of my mouth, I can follow direction. I am at least somewhat off book (that is, memorized).

Sadly, all that good momentum got shot to hell today, with our dance call for Cats.

We had a two hour audition with the choreographer for Cats, during which we learned three combinations and performed each in groups of 3.

(Oh, yeah, later in the season we're doing Cats. Complete with ridiculously complicated dancing. I say ridiculous because the stage is maybe 10 feet by 10 feet. )

I know I'm not a dancer. I did not expect to suddenly become a dancer today. But I can't help being saddened by the fact that I SUCKED.

I'm a perfectionist, true, and hard on myself, and I'm not sure what the choreographer thought, I'll admit, but there's just no getting around the fact that I have no extension, no flexibility, and a distinctly muddled understanding about how the moves I'm seeing should be communicated to my feet.

It makes me sad, because I like dance but I'm clearly not trained or good at it. I truly fear two things that may happen from this audition: I won't be allowed to be onstage at all in Cats and, much, much worse, I won't be allowed to be a Hot Box girl in Guys and Dolls. The Hot Box girls are so fun. They get to sing nasal, whiny choruses and do a strip tease - who wouldn't want to be a Hot Box Girl?!?

Ah, well. I am trying so hard to be a grown up, to accept that I won't always be perfect. I am trying not to let my self-confidence plummet just because I lack the ability to change direction on a maxi-step.

I hope I'm good at something else in recompense. Flossing, for instance, or taking care of lepers. Something to make up for the lack of dance in my life.

I hope whatever thing that is, I find it and think of it throughout Guys and Dolls while I'm in the Salvation Army instead getting to be a sexy, stripping Hot Box Girl. "Floss, floss, floss," I'll be thinking, banging that bass drum and singing Follow the Fold.

Look for that expression on my face. That'll be weeks 11 and 12.

Summer Stock

Ok, people, I have crossed over into an alternate universe. Everyone plays show tunes, in their car, in their stereos, in their iPods. All the boys are gay, and fabulous dancers. There is a definite atmosphere of summer camp, and everyone is engaged in that I-must-tell-you-my-life-story dance that goes with meeting people for the first time. I've heard the phrase, "we're going to be best friends" at least six times.

I am doing summer stock. Now, don't get me wrong, I like these people, and I am fully prepared to enjoy myself. I think we're going to have a great time. But I also see people already giving themselves away and it is cracking me up. Some classic first sentences from these folk:

"Look at me, I'm already yelling in the house!"

"Charlie was the first gay man I was ever in love with."

"We brought all of Hannah's hair..." This last was said as a large, see-through box of hair pieces and wigs came out of the minivan. How does one end up with such an assortment of personally owned wigs??

The minivan contingent made me laugh anyway - girls arriving flanked by relatives and ensconced in massive vehicles filled with their things. We had the mother, grandmother, brother combo, also the mother/brother duo, and a very gruff father that did all the heavy lifting. These are people who brought with them boxes of canned green beans, George Foreman Grills, extra microwaves. It is a madhouse of people who have not all made the break from home.

To be fair, a lot of these folks are still in college. Enough said.

When I say all of the boys are gay, I mean they are all boys, and ALL gay.

Oh, and the house...

I am also living in a Scooby-Doo episode. The house is a rickety, spider-infested firetrap of an old house with a scary attic and creey basement to boot. It's a charming old house, and with some work, would be a gorgeous place to live, but it was bought run-down and years of only being lived in during the summer has left lots of dirty corners and vermin. The boys live in the equally run-down carriage house in back. We've got 11 girls in 8 bedrooms with 2 bathrooms. Hmmm.

I got in by myself at about 1:30 am the other night. No one had told me that someone was IN the house, and no one had told that someone that I might be coming in late, so I basically gave her the fright of her life. I was in the midst of a phone call: "Yeah, honey, I'm fine, it's just that the house is really old and creepy and there's no one here, and... YAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!....*click*.

It was fine. It was just I'd given one of my roommates a heart attack as I wandered around checking out the house. She thought I was an intruder and hid under the covers hoping desperately that I'd just go away.

It was quite an introduction.

In the meantime, don't let all this gossip fool you. I have my own insecurities that I'm sure show as much as the ones I'm noticing in my compatriots. But I'm trying to keep my mouth shut and watch everyone else.

Gotta go - more stories to listen to - more people to figure out.

Tales from the front will follow.

Change

The hard part about trying to change your life is what to do when it actually changes. I went trotting off to these auditions in NYC looking for a change. They were, quite frankly, depressing on so many levels, but they went well, and I got several offers. I've actually taken one of the offers, Memorial Day to Labor Day, 6 plays in 14 weeks. With any luck I can take my computer and give bulletins from afar.

Work is what I wanted. I got work. I get four months completely free of an office, working my butt off as an actor, which is EXACTLY what I wanted. So of course, now I am petrified. And I don't want to go.

Actually, that fear is a good sign. I always get it before good experiences. I dread them, I fight against the oncoming growth and excitement and long to burrow my head in the sand and do nothing. Then the thing I am dreading almost always turns out beautifully. But that doesn't stop me from dreading and fearing it, NO!

I remember the moment I realized I must secretly like change. I was waiting for a train, watching the pigeons flirt with the red and green ceiling, thinking about how much I hate change, when it dawned on me how much change I had forced myself into over the years. I had been bouncing from place to place, trying new lives on like sunglasses, always moving forward to find the next part of my life. Wow, I thought, if I really hated change, surely I would have just stayed in one of those places and tried to make a go of it.

In a way, I've done that in Chicago, with success, stayed put and tried to make things work. But now I'm restless, and rather than just suppress the restlessness, I'm going somewhere new to meet new people.

I know I'll learn, but, boy, I hope I have fun.

Cocktail Party

I got an invitation yesterday. A lovely watercolour of a white front door with red flowers blooming around it, overlaid with see-through paper printed in a refined font with lots of flourishes, invited me to a cocktail party in honour of my cousin and his fiance, who are getting married in June. The party is in South Carolina, in a little town called Trenton. Trenton is only about four streets wide by three streets long, and that's not an exaggeration. It's where my great grandmother held court until she was buried at the Ebeneezer Baptist Church. She likely had some reservations about being buried in the Baptist Cemetery, as she was a loyal Presbyterian, but according to my grandmother (her daughter), somehow all the cemeteries are Baptist.

I can't go to this cocktail party, but I wish that I could. A longing came to me like a flock of birds settling in a tree. There's something about that place that seems to own me. The streets are named for my ancestors, the town is full of my distant cousins, and even forgetting those connections, there's something necessary about celebrating a family event. I may exaggerate the historical significance of the place, since I didn't grow up there and have very few memories of that community, but the fact is that the nucleus of my mother's family is there, like the hub of a wheel.

My feeling of identification with the location is, I'll admit, Romanticizes. Another cousin was a teacher at the high school in this area for years - a school that until very recently, held separate proms for black and white students. I find that idea mind-boggling, but that's part of the reality of that community. The South is a complicated place, and I love its complexity, but I can't deny I am naive to much of its limitations.

So I have an acknowledged advantage when I think of home - I think of the fine and the beautiful things. I may be hundreds of miles away, I may live in a much more liberal place, but I appreciate a community that throws parties for its young brides and bridegrooms, and I appreciate that my family has been a part of that community for a very, very long time.

And while I may not agree with everyone's politics, I sure wish I could fly down and have a drink with those people.

Other worlds

So I'm broke. What else is new? What's new is that I shouldn't be broke. There are checks for work I did over three months ago that should be in my hot little hands. But they aren't. I can see the downside to non-equity acting. I am beginning to believe that no one ever gets paid in this business, that all agencies simply prey on your willingness to take crap because you "have to start somewhere" and if you finally make noise, they replace you with another eager young thing.

But I have to admit, the sums of money coming to me seemed massive at first, until I realized the very prosaic uses to which those sums must be put - debt, savings, health insurance. Depressing. I don't even have credit card debt, the way so many of my fellow 30-somethings do - I should by all rights be ROLLING in money! I live within my means! I give at least a paltry sum to charity!

The biggest problem with the three-four month wait for money you make on acting gigs is this: by the time the money comes through your door, you have spent it in imagination so many exotic and fabulous ways that having to put it in safe and reasonable places feels anticlimactic. You've had endless time to think about that money, to make plans for it, split it into happy sub-monies that will make so many accounts bigger. You've cut the pie over and over, trying to work out how to feed all the many, many guests.

Of course, some people have literally spent the money before it comes. I've only sort of done that. Heh.

Domesticity

Mardi Gras: so Hank made me gumbo and we played Scrabble last night. Frighteningly domestic - I might as well be sixty-five. I lost at Scrabble. I'm a better loser than most people - games are games, it takes special circumstances to make me feel bad about losing. I feel bad about failing in life, but not losing a game.

I can't help feeling a little guilty at how much fun something simple like our evening was: kick-ass, slow-cooked gumbo (chicken, sausage, AND shrimp), and a friendly round of word jamming. It is actually word jamming, since we play on a Travel Scrabble, which makes you snap the tiles into place so sudden movement won't jar them.

Part of the fun of the evening was allowing myself to eat. I am dieting - back on the wagon today - because I head off to NYC for some auditions in late March and want to look my best. I don't consider myself fat, not at all, but I'm trying to be as trim as is possible. It's a cattle call - I refuse to be dismissed for an extra five pounds. So the poundage is on its way off. I took a break in the diet for Mardi Gras, however. While I was at it, I made sure to eat pancakes yesterday, too. It was heaven. I've been making supremely healthy choices for about two weeks now, I can't tell you how gratifying it was to eat without compunction. Raaaahhhh.

So now I'm back to being good for the next three weeks. It's not torture, I don't starve myself. In fact, it's nice to put the brakes on for a change. Then, when the diet is lifted, food tastes so scrumptious, so decadent.

I'm looking forward to eating bacon again. Apologies to the Jews and Muslims, but bacon is delicious.