Monday, April 4, 2011

Time Will Pass

"The Three Sisters" is a play about time. Time passing. Time lagging. Time spent waiting for real life to begin. It's about memory and longing. About trying to recapture something beautiful from the past. About hoping hard for the future.

I have thought a lot about how I'll prepare before the play. This doesn't seem like one to just eat a burger, show up, and do. Although given that it's Berkeley the odds are much greater that I'll end up eating a gluten-free veggie patty and drinking kale juice and then getting laced into my corset. This play is full of secrets and private dreams and somehow I need to get inside those before we start each night. I think. Otherwise the first act (in which I speak the very first words) will be more about warming up than actually flying.

So I have created an Olga playlist and loaded it onto my ipod. I went to the new "Jane Eyre" movie and lost myself in the moors. I remember reading that book in the back of my Dad's 1979 camper van while we drove across the country in the early 80s. I have been thinking a lot about my own childhood, and searching for memories--particularly of my grandparents and time I spent in their house as a girl. And then I was moved to go on YouTube and watch videos. Of my husband's college acapella group. Yup. The Zumbyes appear to be part of my prep to play Olga in "The Three Sisters."

There's a particular feeling I'm searching for. A raw, yearning, sense of possibility. A melancholy ache. The longing I remember feeling when I was on the verge of the rest of my life. The sweet melancholy is right there when I look at these videos from my senior year of college. I almost think I can hear my roommate laughing in the audience. Six weeks after Doc Hubby and I had started dating. In May. When the forsythia was blooming and he brought me boughs in a watering can early in the morning. Our play begins in May. The restlessness of Spring. It's already Spring here in San Francisco. The flowers are unfamiliar. No forsythia. No lilac. Large almost too bright blossoms under palm trees. It's strange. For part of the day today I was pretty convinced San Francisco is the best city ever. I certainly can't imagine a city with more spectacular views.

And so I listen to Billy Joel and Mary Chapin Carpenter and Joni Mitchell and John Denver and James Taylor and Nanci Griffiths. And I watch my 20 year old husband wearing a silly tie bouncing around a stage and singing songs he arranged. And my grandmother is in assisted living and my daughter dances ballet around her room.

Time will pass.

And Doc Hubby is third from the left at the beginning of the song and in the back row on the left for most of the rest.