It's Bad Luck to Say Good Luck on Opening Night

Five stages of opening night:

1. Denial

(I am shaking my head in this picture) No, it can't be. I'm not ready.

2. Anger

WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE ME OR MY PERFORMANCE? WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT GIVING ARTISTIC LIFE TO THE HUMAN CONDITION? DO YOU THINK THIS IS EASY? I AM A FRAGILE PIECE OF GLASS AND I WILL CRUSH YOU.

3. Bargaining

Just give me one more preview. Or a few more notes. I can do it then, I swear. I'm good for it.

4. Depression

I'm going to start doing my application for nursing school. This will be the last time I ever perform in my life.

5. Acceptance.

Welp.

Actually, the five stages of opening night are anxiety, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety, and drunk.

It happened and I lived. I'm so looking forward to the nuttiness of reviews (which I am not reading, honestly, although the threat of them is buzzing around in the back of my brain) being done, and just doing my job. Doing the show for five whole weeks, which is the longest run I've ever done, and seeing how it grows and living with it. Not having to fight to promote is a huge change for me. Normally I'm praying that a show I'm in gets a review, because any exposure would be helpful and we're working so hard to be seen. This time I don't have to fight, don't have to do anything but act really (unheard of), and the review are going to come and they are scary.

All of that kind of seems like a bit of a distraction from the play, from the story, so I am looking forward to it being over and doing my job. The play. The story.

Ugh, isn't it awful how I always am looking forward to something that is not the something that I'm in? Even if the something that I'm in is something I was previously looking forward to? What is up with that?

I have to now figure out the routine I'm going to have for the next few weeks, that will allow me to do the show, write a million things (which I am very very behind on, and kind of worried about), go to the gym, find a joe job, plan my summer and the rest of my life, and become the kind of amazing person that I plan to be every Monday, but who I hate by every Tuesday.

It's kind of unreal that it's now running, this idea has been in and out of my life for two years, that I might get a chance to do something like this, and now this date that was so set in my mind as being a huge deal is passed. It's unreal that I got to work at a place like Tarragon, with the people I got to work with.

But I guess it's happening. As much as anything is happening. Is anything happening?