Here comes the audience now

We've had a wealth of runs with this show. We learned the blocking very fast, so that since the second week we have been just doing fixes and runs every day. It's a blessing because a show as a whole is a different animal, and this one in particular needs to flow, needs to wash over us and so the runs are necessary, as everything connects.


I have had good runs and bad runs. It's a pretty amazing show in that even doing it tired, or doing it when you don't really want to, you can have moments of clarity. It picks you up and takes you regardless of where you are when you start. Having said that, there's a very specific feeling that feels like flying, feels like 50 people are onstage and connected and moving as one, and that's only possible if I am ready and open and not tired. There are parts that always get me and are touchstones in that I'm able to drop in. There are parts that are harder.

I worry about my monologue, but I try not to think of it as my moment, that I am speaking through the whole show and that when I actually speak it is for everyone, so it is just another part of a bigger picture. I'm still worried. But, you know. Working on it. Because I really do believe that is the case.

It's such a special show in that way.


Plus, we all look hot in it. The costumes are by Yso and Erika Connor and they're effing sick.

Last night was our invited dress, and it was pretty interesting to have an audience. The run before it was a very hard one for me, probably my worst run in a lot of ways. I found myself fidgeting, struggling to hit positions. I was tired.

I was not tired for the dress, but it became a very different show. The incubation process of this one has been interesting. In one way, it's hard to say that we've been in isolation, because there are 50 of us, so how secluded can the process be? At the same time, it's an intimate show, and we've shared that together, so now that there are all these other people, it is changing a lot. There were definite rough patches, which I guess is to be expected. And lots of surprises. Two of the monologues (one being mine) got laughs that I was totally not thinking would come. Weird things happened. A part of someone's shoe fell off so I picked it up during a part that we do when we roll on the floor, and shoved it in my bra. I ended up in (physical) places I had never been before.

But it's all good. It was a dress and the audience was great and now we have broken that seal, and the audiences can continue to come and we can grow.


Already the seeds of sadness that it's going to end are starting to sprout. With such a big cast, there are people I haven't had a full on conversation with, and that is sad, especially because everyone is so talented and there are people that I have looked up to for years and years here, acting beside me. But it isn't done yet and I'm trying to enjoy it even though I know it will end and be gone, and that's heartbreaking, really.

But it's less heartbreaking than it is beautiful that I got to do something like this, once. Right?