Coming Back to Life

A couple things always surprise me about going through production to open a show. I don’t know why I’m surprised; I should totally be used to it by now, but I’m not.

Maybe I’m like the goldfish. They say goldfish have no memory, so every trip around the bowl is a new experience. Swim swim swim. . . Hey, look! A plastic cave! Swim swim swim. . . Hey, look! A plastic cave!

Or like the addict: This time, it’ll be different.

One of the things that surprises me is how each time I do production, it’s harder. This is because each time I do it, I’m older (I hit 40 this month, post to come!). My brain thinks that with age comes experience and so each production period should be easier than the last. My body, however, says, Sweetheart, you ain’t twenty-eight anymore.

When the sleep deprivation is hitting me and I struggle lifting coils of cable, it strikes me how viciously difficult it must be for women that have their kids later in life.

The other thing that surprises me is how long it takes me to come back to life when production is over. In my head, the day after opening night I have my house clean and I’m making home-cooked meals after I run five miles and go to yoga. My body, however, is fully invested in making endless pots of tea, reading magazines, and eating Girl Scout cookies.

Which is bliss.

All the flowering things are blooming in my neighborhood. It’s really beautiful. The last time I was here during daylight, it was winter. To me, it’s as if they just popped up in full bloom overnight.

And around my house, I struggle to understand anything that’s happening:

#4, wearing one shoe: I lost my shoe.

Me: I see. That’s problematic.

#4, to #5: Can you come help me find my shoe?

#5: You lost your shoe?

#4, shaking her foot: Duh.

#5: What’s wrong with you?

#4: Just come help me look.

They walk out of the kitchen. About thirty seconds later #5 walks back in.

#5: Sometimes she makes no sense.

Me: Oh?

#5: Yeah. She just told me to come look for her shoe and we went to her door but then she wouldn’t let me in her room.

Me: Hmm.

#5: That’s like sending a cow to an orphanage.

Me:

One of my favorite bloggers came to my opening night show last week and wrote about it. Check her out: GoJulesGo at GoGuiltyPleasures- How I Almost Walked The Red Carpet Last Week.

I think we made it

In the [truly] immortal words of the lead character in my show, it is finished.

We open tonight.

Finally.

At some point during the party that follows the show, reviews will start to post online. People with iPhones (which is everyone except me) will read them and word will spread. What did they say? Did they like it? Do we have to look for work next month, or can I buy a new laptop?

And after tonight, irrespective of critics and ticket sales, I start to get my life back.

Right now it looks like this:

That’s our room. All my mess.

Underneath that pile is my writing desk.

My life also looks like this:

*sigh*. Well, at least I know they ate.

I took the kids to school for the first time in months this morning. I overslept. I was cranky and snappy. There wasn’t enough food for lunches for everyone (not that I had time to make them all anyway). But damn, it was good to see them. I tripped over their shoes and ignored the clothes on the living room floor and gave them money, and sat with the pull of truth inside of what a terrible job I’ve done on the parenting side of things during this production period.

I’m glad we’re at the end of this.

Lots of people have jumped in to help us get through the past couple months, including my mom, my sister, and some of the best babysitters in the world. CC is amazing, the way he’s kept everything running while going into production on his own show. The kids have also stepped up and taken on more responsibility. All while I get to work with some of my favorite people, doing a pretty kick-ass thing. I’m a very, very lucky woman.

Hey, when did we get a rat?

To all the incredibly talented people – and I do not say that lightly – that I am fortunate enough to work with, I say: Thank you. Break legs. And, hopefully unnecessarily preemptively, Ben Brantley is a twat.

Merde!

Punctuation Saves Lives

I remembered this image when I was searching for a title to start writing today’s post. I was going to call it:

Jesus Christ. What Happened?

and then I realized I could also call it:

Jesus Christ (what happened).

And then I giggled uncontrollably because I’m doing production on a show that has Jesus in it and it’s the reason I’ve been posting so sparsely and sporadically since December. I would like to say that everyone here at work in the theater turned around and asked me what I was laughing at but the truth is they’re all so used to me being on auto-giggle by now that no one paid any attention and even if they had, they wouldn’t laugh anyway.

We’re at that point.

One of my favorite places in New York is the Westerly Market. It’s a small natural foods grocery store that I love mostly because it has tasty snacks and my favorite chocolate. They have healthy things too, including a juice bar.

We had a strangely-timed lunch break today because we’re shooting B-roll (video to be used for publicity) so I went to Westerly and hit the juice bar. I got a shot of wheatgrass while I was waiting for my drink.

I dig wheatgrass. Sue me. And yes it does, in fact, taste like grass. I’m pretty sure when I was an infant I spent a significant portion of my crawling months eating grass. It’s just that good to me.

The drink I got today is called a Maca Firecracker. It’s coconut, cinnamon, agave, cayenne, and maca. It’s divine. Heavy on the cayenne, easy on the agave, as per my request.

It was perfect.

I paid at the juice bar ($12.50. No, I’m not making that up) and then grabbed my tasty snacks and went to the front counter to pay for them. You have to do that separately because making drinks that involve pressing wheatgrass and hacking open coconuts is quite time-consuming, and they can’t mess around with ringing up your tasty snacks back there at the juice bar.

At the front counter, I pay for my tasty snacks and then watch, like it’s in slow motion: My sleeve catching my Maca Firecracker and knocking it off the counter. The cup flipping upside down. Me screaming “nooooo!” in a very Wookieish voice. Half of my nectar of the gods rushing out of the broken lid.

Here’s the thing about a Maca Firecracker. When it’s spilled on the floor, it looks like vomit. I’ve never had so much personal space anywhere in New York City. I’m considering carrying around rubber vomit with me just to get everyone out of my hula hoop.

Oh, so back to the Jesus Christ (what happened) thing. I’m in production, blah blah blah. The hours are long, yadda yadda yadda. Also, there a lot of screens. It looks like this:

By the end of the first week of tech rehearsals I had the worst case of screen-related eye strain I’ve ever had (even worse than the case I got when I stayed up all night and wrote this post over the summer). When we finally reached the day off I had to lay around with my eyes shut. I didn’t even make it to yoga.

I had to read analogue books for a whole week (I read Sara Zarr’s How To Save A Life and Ree Drummond (aka The Pioneer Woman)’s Black Heels To Tractor Wheels)

Even now, ten days later, I can feel my retinas singeing. It’s still bad enough that I’m not even going to attempt to fix the alignment of these pictures.

Speaking of wheatgrass (and we were, earlier, I swear), there’s a guy I work with who is friends with a guy who started a wheatgrass company out of his apartment back in the day . The mice kept getting into and eating the wheatgrass. And the more they got into it, the harder they were to exterminate.

I feel like the wheatgrass people could make a motto out of that somehow.

I guess none of that really had anything to do with punctuation.