Home Should Be Where the Heart Is

And of course, with December first, comes snowfall first.

Pretty, maybe?

But I am less than impressed.

It's both wonderful and terrible to do a show away from home. It's wonderful because the pressures of Toronto kind of disappear. It's too bad to miss plays and auditions, but it's also a bit of a relief, in a sick way. I can't care about the petty stuff that goes on there as much just because I'm not there. And you get to live in a different place, be a bit of a tourist, focus on just the play, because you don't really have a life here (this is possibly the best part), meet new people, work with old friends (because I love the crew here so impossibly much), so all of those things are fun and adventure and whee!

But I'm missing home a lot this time. I miss my friends and my bed and knowing how to do things. It's hard when the grocery store is a thirty five minute walk from my house, so I only have the food I have. I don't know where things are, so it's hard to do things. The snow makes things harder. Part of that is the nature of Sudbury, and part of it is the nature of being in a new place. A really amazing audition came up, and I had to send a tape instead of going, and I'm never as good on tape as I am in person, so I feel I lost it, and that, like, really sucks. I'm working on the thing that, obviously, I am rejected way more than I am accepted, but it still hurts every time, and sometimes it hurts a lot. Weird to miss out on work because you ARE working. Frustrating, that one.

So funny, what actors do. It's exciting, especially when it takes you to amazing new places (so many of my friends are touring fringe shows this summer, and I'm jealous that they'll get to the West Coast). But I know people who have been out of suitcases forever, and I'm not sure I'd like that for more than a short period of time. I want to do as much regional and far away stuff now, while I have the energy and the enthusiasm to see things and places, because.....there's also something to be said for working at home.

Which I get to do for the next few things, so I'm lucky. Very lucky. To be bouncing back and forth between Toronto and not Toronto, to bounce from comedy to drama, from ensemble work and supporting roles to bigger stuff. Back and forth. That's good for me. Keeps me from the streets.

I guess the goal is to find a home in all these things, in the work, no matter what the work is. Gah. What an asshole thing to say. But sometimes, because I'm an asshole, I think I've even done it. And then the work turns on me and throws me away, or I can't find a way in, and I've never been less comfortable, less at home, than I am with the work, this crazy work, this work that I don't even know what the work is, a lot of it is just stuff I do, stuff I try. Again. Find a home amongst all of this? Is this possible? I think it is, and it sounds wonderful.

Anyway. In my continuing series of having amazing hair in shows:

The Braidy bunch!