Wow

Ok, so my self-doubt is creeping in steadily - it is difficult to face a dance mirror next to a crew of dancers and not desperately want to lose about fifty pounds immediately, BUT I'm still having a fantastic time.  Everyone else is, too.  It's magic.  It's so lucky.  When you gather a whole group of people to tell a cracking good story, and the place you are telling it has the money to make sure you have beautiful clothes and fair pay and amazing working conditions, when your director is fascinated with how to help you all be genuine and immediately throws away any idea she brought in that doesn't feel right, when your fellow actors are cheerful and cooperative because they know their own ideas will be valued and the ideas they are given will be solidly playable, it is blissful.

You know, I write all that, and it sounds untethered, a checklist of happy working conditions.  But that's not the real joy.  Happy working conditions are fantastic, obviously, but actually, I just love the tinkering that goes with working out how to tell a story.  We blocked a big group number today, and that involves tons of tedious incremental movements combined with choreography that shouldn't look like "dance", and it was slightly painstaking and repetitive and I loved it.  I couldn't stop smiling at myself in the dance mirror.  I think that's what's so hard about the losing weight thing - I'm so happy, I love every minute of it, and I think I therefore must somehow be radiating joy out of every pore, that there must be some physical manifestation of my extreme engagement, and I look up and instead I just look sort of lumpy, pale, and overly wide.

But of course if there were no dance mirror, I would go on thinking I look completely amazing, so perhaps once the show opens I won't be aware that I tower over everyone else in massive fashion!

Still, getting to do this is lucky lucky lucky, and I am trying to love it hard enough to have it soak into my skin so I'm only ever this person from now on, the one who gets to do this, even if I only get to do it sometimes.  Oh, and of course, I think while I do the show I will magically lose fifty pounds.  Ha!

Also, every rehearsal makes me laugh.  A lot.