Ghosts of Christmas Past

So I was last here in Louisville ten years ago.  I played a 1930's magician's assistant in a beautiful play called "Orange Lemon Egg Canary."  That's me in the shorts.  The title refers to a magic trick in which the magician peels an orange and inside it he finds a lemon.  He peels the lemon to reveal an egg.  He cracks the egg and a canary flies out.  Cool trick.

I have been trying, since I arrived, to overlay my memory of being in this town...at this theater...with my experiences of the last week.  Merging the map of the city in my head with the streets I'm walking--like superimposing Google maps and street view.  We were here 11 weeks in 2003.  I should be able to remember something.

And I have been failing miserably.  I can't remember which rehearsal room we used ten years ago. I  walk to where I remember the door being, and hit a wall.  Admittedly, the city itself has changed significantly.  We're not staying in the same building we stayed in before.  An effort has been made to revitalize the downtown and there's a HUGE stadium, the KFC YUM! Center (I wish I were making that up) across the street from the theater.  Beyonce sang there not too long ago.  But it is downright disconcerting to know that I was here, know it for a fact, and not remember much of anything.  The Starbucks is where I recall it being--but it looks totally different inside than my memory of it.

And then there's the fact that I did "Our Town," the same play I'm doing now, fifteen years ago.  And much like this city, I remember some of it crystally.  I remember loving being on top of the ladder and listening to the choir practice in the first act.  I remember sitting at the soda fountain.  I can hear the voice of the woman who played my mother loud and clear.  I have to resist falling into some of her line readings.  And yet.  I have been racking my brain and I have absolutely no memory of who played Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs.  I can't picture the kid who played my brother.  The stage manager's words just lurk somewhere right at the back of my head.  Vaguely familiar.  I can taste them in the back of my throat.

I have lived long enough that there are parts of my adult life which are absolute complete blanks.

We have zillions of people in this play.  All 19 young actors who form the theater's apprentice company are in the show.  When they tumble into the rehearsal room, it's like I'm suddenly surrounded by puppies.  Puppies with lots of facial hair and plaid shirts and big glasses and stocking caps.  I have to stop myself from grabbing them and saying, look, I know I seem to you like some forty year old lady who is playing the mom...but about thirty seconds ago I was an unpaid intern and moving the furniture.  Last week I did the scene up on top of the ladder.  Just blink and you'll be Mrs. So-and-so, too.

You'll be finding yourself saying the exact, and I mean the exact, words your mother said to you.  Your fictional mother or your real one.  Or both.  You'll catch yourself saying those same words exactly as she did and trying to at least change the inflection.  After all, you're doing things your own way.  You'll be alone in actor housing five days before Christmas, watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and seeing scenes you swear have never been included in the televised broadcast...and checking twitter to see if this year they're doing some uncut longer version that they've never done before.  Because since when do we see George Bailey as a kid? And finding out that no.  You just simply don't remember it.

Ghosts of Christmas Past. 

In the play "Orange Lemon Egg Canary" the actor playing Great, the magician, does the magic trick on stage.  He peels the orange and lo and behold there's a lemon.  He peels the lemon and reveals an egg.  He cracks the egg...

and it plops to the floor in a sticky mess.

Funny.  I could have sworn a canary flew out.

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.

Two Child Stars and Acapella Groupies

Do you know that I know two child stars? Like, right now. I am actively friends with two child stars. Neither of them are from this country which may explain why they are so relatively well-adjusted. Compared to our child stars. None of whom I know, personally.

Both are ageless. Both are incredibly warm. Both love children. Both are still actresses. Both have beautiful accents.

I have not worked with either of them, but I would very much like to.

The universe has asked me to think a lot about getting older in the last few weeks. First, I wasn't cast in a play because (among other things as well I'm sure) I am too old to make the production work. Then, I went to see an absolutely brilliant high school production of "Hamlet" directed by my absolutely brilliant friend, Sarah, starring an absolutely brilliant high school senior whom I once had to nearly fail in a 9th grade acting class, but that was just because he was lazy and this famous actor's kid was dragging their whole scene down by being a jerk. Not because he wasn't talented. So I went backstage to congratulate this kid, who will be famous in about five years, mark my words. I was standing outside the dressing room waiting for him to emerge, when another cast member breezed out with all the casual confidence of a 15 year old New York City prep kid. I asked him if Hamlet was still in the dressing room. He hovered briefly in flight, looked me up and down and said, "Are you his Mom?" May I remind you that Hamlet is a high school senior. Oh hello pride...so nice to eat you.

So then I got an audition. I have been getting a lot of little TV auditions for character roles. One line in a TV show...two lines in a movie. I show up, and as a young "character actress" I find myself in a waiting room full of old ladies, fat African American women, and weasel-faced, frizzy-haired forty-somethings in sweatshirts. I guess I fall into the latter category? And may I say, thus far I have thought to myself "If I were casting this, I'd choose the old lady, the fat African American lady, or that frizzy-haired chick in the glasses over me in a heartbeat." And may I further say, I have not been cast in any of these roles. But then I got this audition for a one-act play festival. I got the script. I read it. And the whole premise of the play is that the character I was auditioning for was devastated because she's too old to be hired as a topless dancer. Really? Really really? I mean, not that I'm looking for employment in that line of work, but really?

Thank you universe.

When I was 20, I was in a beautiful play in college called "Abingdon Square." Funny, I now live in the city that is home to Abingdon Square. I was cast as Aunt Minnie, a white haired, old lady--wig and all. I have been a "young character actress" since I was 11 and cast as Mrs. Fuddy in the 5th grade winter play, "The Christmas Elf." During rehearsal for "Abingdon Square" I remember getting a piece of advice from one of my teachers, a brilliant actor who happened to be performing in the show as well. He told me, "Stop trying so hard to play her age. Don't act your idea of what it is to be old. No one feels old inside. I am surprised every day when I look in the mirror and I don't see a 25 year old looking back at me." This to me, at 20, was a revelation. And some of the best direction I've ever gotten.

So then tonight we went to this crazy event. The United Glee Club of NYC, this 114 year old group of rich white guys from fancy-schmancy colleges who, like, rent Lincoln Center so they can still wear tails and sing with other rich white guys like they did in college (and to their credit also do a lot of wonderful charitable work) had a concert. The acappella group Doc Hubby sang with in college was their special guest group. I fell in love with Doc Hubby when he was the leader of this particular group. I was their biggest groupie in the early 90s. I have a soft spot. So this group was there and singing and bouncing around and being 20 and doing a lot of the same exact stuff they were doing 20 some years ago and I thought...wait a second. If we went up afterward and talked to them, and told them who we were, and who Doc Hubby was, and how awesome they were...even if I'm the only one hip enough (or lame enough) to be wearing jeans to this event, and even if I have a good haircut and don't really look my age, these sweet faced boys would smile benignly and nod and think, as we did in the late 80s, "Man that dude and his wife are ancient." And if they bothered to do the math, or if we simply said what year Doc Hubby directed the group, they might scratch their shaggy heads and go on to say, "Dude, I wasn't even born then."

What they don't know, is that I still wake up every morning and look in the mirror and wonder why I don't still look like I did when I was singing the first tenor part of "Somebody Loves Me" to myself in the shower in my senior dorm.

Time to Cook or Get Out of the Fire

I said this to my friend Rebecca on the phone yesterday. "It's time to cook or get out of the fire."

I meant kitchen. We both decided we like fire. I am not totally sure what it means.

We are all about to turn a big number. Birthday-wise. And we've all got something stuck in our craws, it seems. All my "about to turn a big number" actor friends.

It comes down to several things, Chris said. Do you really just want to do good work? Or is it the whole being famous thing. Because we really are in a place now where we could just decide to do good work and then do it.

My video did not win $10.000 on YouTube. A big company was sponsoring this contest. I was so sure I would at least be a finalist. I really was. I was ridiculously disheartened when I wasn't chosen as a finalist. I was all ready to launch my Facebook campaign and my Twitter campaign and win. That money was already in the baby's college fund. But I may have said "poop" too many times and talked about my underwear too much for this squeaky clean company's liking. Or it may have been just too much about me and not enough about the cute baby. Honestly, I thought that the whole idea was for them to choose a new spokesperson for their YouTube channel. So maybe it should be an itsy bitsy bit more about me than her. But then again. Maybe they just didn't like me.

There's this theater company that I love and I have worked for for many years. I have become friends with the people who work there. I feel, in a way, that they are my family. Or I am a tiny part of the family. Maybe just that weird sister-in-law who reads books out on the deck and sips sweet tea while everyone else is in the kitchen laughing and drinking red wine. But as time goes on, it appears that I'm kind of not being chosen to be a part of this company. I have been passed over.

Wah wah wah. Poor me. Not everyone can like you. Not everyone will like you. I feel like a pretty likeable person most of the time. But I have got to come to terms with the fact that I just don't float everyone's boat.

Not everybody will like me.

So therefore, it is time to get together with my friends. And cook or get out of the fire. There are people I adore and respect and would love to work with. So maybe I should stop sitting around waiting to be called in from the deck, and actually get out my own damn crock pot and start cooking. They all seem ready to cook too.

So we're doing a reading. My friends and I. Here in New York. To benefit a new theater company. I had rehearsal for it last night. The first rehearsal I've attended in over two years. It felt really nice.

If you're here, do you wanna come?