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.