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...