Saturday, June 25, 2016

The beginning of the end - last Saturday Night

A nice low-key day. Wide awake at 3:30 and dozed until 5:30 – what the heck – got laundry done by 7:00 and then breakfast. Emma (our director for the third comp project) and I ran out to grab some props for the piece. Then memorize lines and rehearsal from 1:00-5:00. We got a lot done today. Since we had mostly framed it in yesterday we really needed to clean up some of the movement and some of the moments. Emma has done a wonderful job keeping us focused and shaping the piece visually. Good variety and use of the space. It is a fairly intense physical piece, but also one with some nice moments for each character, especially at the end.  The plan is to take most of tomorrow off – and drill the lines – but to meet 6:30-8:00 to refine and then 8:00-9:30 in the space to tech. Low tech so it should go smoothly.

But, yes, it finally happened – I cut one at rehearsal. Thankfully amongst friends and only a few of them at that. Seriously though, a diet of mostly fried stuff or over cooked rice or noodles or overly spicy stuff is a bad combination. I do what I can to eat veggies and salad during the week, but that gets sooo boring. I go after the crap mainly on Friday and Saturday, so, yea lunch could have been a bit healthier, and thus a bit less gassy. It has been great not to cook at the end of a long long day, but I need to get some real food in me again. We are active and starving most of the time, so I have no idea if I have lost five pounds or gained fifteen.


It’s hard to believe that this time next week I will be part way home. The journey seemed so long on those first few days. Such intense training and such full full days. One part of me longs to get home to family, and more comfortable digs, more familiar routines, but another part of me recognizes how precious these remaining few days are. How often do people get to put their life on hold for a month and go be immersed in such a demanding and creative environment. Fourteen hours days are hard, but at the end of the day you can look to this wonderful thing you helped make and know it would not have existed without this specific group of people in this specific time and place coming together to create it. The hard part will be how to sustain this energy after returning home. The fear is habit will drag down with it all that had been developed, but maybe not. I feel like I have some fantastic ideas about process and collaboration that I didn’t understand before this experience. And if that fails I can just stomp until I am exhausted, collapse to the floor, slowly get up, and maybe something will come to me.

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