May 5th and February 11th

"Father died a year ago today.  On your birthday Irina, May 5th." Three Sisters

"Well now dear, a very happy birthday to my girl and many happy returns." Our Town

This is the second play I have done in a row that involves a character's birthday.

We performed "Three Sisters" on May 5th.  The actress who played Irina's actual birthday was the day after.  May 6th.  The prop birthday cake we used in that production was laughable.  Like some kind of joke.  There is no way that a single person in the audience could possibly have believed it was an actual edible cake.  On the actress who played Irina's actual birthday, we brought in a real cake.  We put real candles on it, and surprised her onstage.  I will never forget her face.  She was so surprised and tickled and amused.  She just kept giggling.  And there's something especially glorious about that sort of thing happening in front of a live audience amongst professional actors who know how to keep the play going.  It was grand.

We will be performing "Our Town" on Emily's birthday--February 11th.  My "daughter's" birthday.

It is a funny thing when something someone speaks on stage is actually true.  When it really is May 5th or February 11th.  Or Christmas Eve or an actor's birthday.  When the stage truth and the true truth converge.  For a moment there is a wonderful clarity--a crystalline moment of shared reality.  And we all actually see each other for a second--even if we've been doing a play for weeks or months and it has become a bit stale.  Theater artists strive a whole lot to create reality on stage.  Most of our efforts are put into finding a way to create circumstances that will allow the lines the playwright has given us to say, to become true.  And by the time we are performing a play...well maybe we feel true about 50% of the time.  Maybe 60% on a good night.

It's a funny job.  Typically a group of total strangers get together in an empty room.  Grown adults mostly.  And then we pretend to be married and related and someone else's mother or wife or best friend.  And we hug and kiss and cry.  And in about a month we do all that in front of people.  Weird, right?  Pretty sure most jobs don't involve pretending to parent coworkers.

And it's my actual birthday today.  750 miles from home.  I've never had my actual birthday celebrated onstage.  But I've had the great privilege to be working on a number of my birthdays.  I think for a lot of people having to work on your birthday is a tremendous bummer.  Those of you who are fortunate enough to have a job most days of your life.  For me, actually, it's grand.  It means that on the day that marks the passage of another year, I'm actually doing what it is I want to be doing.  I turned 40 during the run of my first Broadway show.  That was one of the best days of my life.  How many people can say that about their 40th birthday?

Today in rehearsal my job is to be a mother.  And then to be a friend.  And to mime making breakfast in a 19th century kitchen.

I think in 2014 I'm going to strive to do at least two of those things with as much truth and awareness and thoughtfulness offstage, as I do on.

Backstage View

There is something melancholy about closing a show. Knowing that this particular group of people will never stand together, wearing those exact clothes, and telling that one story. Ever again. Even though for many weeks after, we all still could. The play still resides inside of us, even though it's been dismantled physically. If we met in a park we could still do the play. Ish.

There are dressing rooms and wings of theaters that I don't remember any more. Time is passing and with it my memory, my memory that I am oh so very proud of and oh so confident of its exactitude, fades. So I took my little camera and grabbed a few shots of what I saw, every day and every night for over 80 performances of "A Free Man of Color." And what I won't see any more.

This was my life for four months. We are gypsies. We are storytellers. Who sometimes get to wear really nice shoes.

The Broad Way

I started this post fully two months ago. As you can see. Before the play I was in even opened. It has now closed. I am sad about it. Here is what I wrote a while ago. Soon I will return to posts about the baby taking off her pjs and pouring talcum powder all over herself and her crib, and then mixing in wipes to make paste and then getting her hand stuck in the wipes container and then shrieking bloody murder. I will also post about how everything was so much better two weeks ago when I was on Broadway and wasn't dealing with preschool separation (which sucks beyond belief, by the way). And what I'm going to make for dinner (turkey and white bean chili tomorrow night). And babysitters who flake on me one hour before auditions and how the cat scratched the baby's head because we haven't clipped her claws in months and how I messed up and let a big audition get by without managing to go in on it and how there's no snow at all any more. But for now here's what I wrote on 11/16/09. Today is January 20th, 2010. Happy New Year.

So I haven't posted in about sixteen years. Sorry about that.

As it turns out, acting in a play on the Broad Way kinda takes it out of you. Who knew? We do 8 shows a week with one day off.

So we open this week which will be a whole other huge story. And there are many stories within. But I do just want to tell you this one story that is kind of unique for me. And says something about the people I'm working with.

The last phase of any rehearsal period is called tech. Basically, this is when you all move out of the crungy basement rehearsal room where you ate white cheddar cheezits and joked around a lot to the theater where you realize that people who paid money will actually be watching you in about a week. You get in your costumes for the first time and you very very slowly work through the play while all the designers finish doing their work of lighting you, and assembling the set, and altering the costumes and inserting sound cues. This takes forever. You get a few lines out and then you stop and do things again. And again. And again. From college theater to the Broad Way these rehearsals run much the same. They are endless. You spend lots of time in corsets if you happen to be doing a period play. The difference is really the quality of the material your dress is made out of, the number of lights that hang above you, and how many people are helping you figure out where your props are.

Under union rules, I believe, tech can involve two "8 out of 10s" and two "10 out of 12s" which basically means for four days you live in the theater. In those days, you work 8 hours in a span of 10 hours, twice, and ten hours in a span of twelve hours twice. Essentially 42 hours spent in the theater over four days. Typically, the goal is to get out of there as soon as possible at the end of every night. And at the end of tech, people are usually celebrating when their character dies ten minutes from curtain because it means they get to go home.

But what was unique for this tech. What I have never really experienced was the following. There are seven people in our cast. Five of us are done significantly before the play ends. But instead of racing home, a kind of amazing thing happened. When the five of us made our final exits, instead of leaving, we all went up into the front row of the mezzanine of our gorgeous theater, sat down together, ate cold pizza, drank warm beer and watched the final hour of tech.

That was all I got written on 11/16. I didn't ever publish it because I think I wanted to read over it and make sure it was okay. I never had time. On that tech night we all stayed to watch this beautiful special effect that happened at the end of our play. Music and lights and movement and snow. It was pretty amazing, actually.
I miss all those people.
I miss the play.

The Play's the Thing

Well I made it. Made it through the first week of rehearsal. We started a week ago today.

Bean seemed to handle things pretty well. Aside from the whole pooping in her bed incident. That was kind of ugly.

And she's cutting some nasty nasty molars. So she's a little sniffly and whiny today. But she'll have a grumpy weekend with Daddy. And I'll have a weekend of rehearsal.

And I have to say...this whole working again thing...? It's super crazy fun! I'm tired, yes. The stress of arranging childcare and preparing the house for a babysitter every morning, then going to work, then coming home, is taxing. How have you all been doing this for so many years without collapsing? I'm kinda wiped after only a week.

I'm still pretty fracking (my new favorite word from "Battlestar Galactica") nervous too, yes. But they're called "plays" for a reason, I believe. And when writers are as wonderful as the amazing Sarah Ruhl, plays are play-ful, and challenging, and terrifying, and incredible to work on.

In the meantime, we eat Magnolia cupcakes tonight and tour preschool numero uno tomorrow. Life goes on, doesn't it.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

Something Happened

Well kids. I'm going back to work.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/michael-cerveris/

"Fiddler on the Roof" it ain't. A beautiful, funny and very poignant play it is.

Agents and Shipwreck

A quote by a renowned and accomplished theater actress as relayed to me by Rebecca Harris:

"Changing agents is like switching seats on the Titanic."