The Only Way Out is Up...

A leeeeeeaaaap of faith.

The best thing about the nadir? Things have to get better.

The thoughts that I have I stil have, and they aren't going away, but they seem less impossible right now. In TheatreBooks today, someone recognized me from 'Tout Comme Elle', and I revealed that I was in the store looking for what's next. He shrugged and said, 'That's what it always is. What's next?'

I guess that relates to 'Ever tried. Ever failed. No Matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' Samuel Beckett. Who probably also had somethings to say about crippling depression and not knowing what the point of it all is anyway.

It's still hard. I'm still paranoid. I'm still figuring out how to deal with that, because it's a horrible feeling, and if I can't get rid of it, I can't do this anymore. So I'm trying to change challenges: not fighting myself, but fighting my paranoia. Not focusing on how awful I am and how I have to quit, but focusing on how I can make myself stronger so that I don't quit.

Or not. I read this. I'm considering it. Maybe that's what I need to do. It feels wrong, but maybe it would do me some good. I'm not sure.

But tonight I went and saw a performance done by a youth group at Factory Theatre. I was lucky enough to go in and chat with these girls after they came and saw 'Modern Love' months ago, and they were all a delight, so I wanted to go and see what they had been working towards. Amazing and inspiring to see the younger generation, who write and act so openly, who show the joy of being in a play. They were totally incredible and it was wonderful to sit in a theatre and feel so open, so wanting them to succeed, so thrilled when they did. Joy.

Remember Mediocrity is Not a Mortal Sin

Note: I started writing this blog post about a week ago, and lost my momentum. So it might be weird because of that. It also might be weird because I am weird. Sasquatch.

I've been going through my general struggle of not feeling so great about myself.

(Side note: 9 times out of 10, I misspell or, more accurately, mistype, 'great' as 'gret', and I think of Dull Gret, who is a character in Caryl Churchill's 'Top Girls', and I start trying to think about how the first act of that play connects to the second, and then I feel stupid and hate myself because the amount that I don't understand or get about theatre is enormous, and I should become a garbageman. EXCEPT THAT I DON'T DRIVE AND CAN'T LIFT MORE THAN THIRTY POUNDS AND BAD SMELLS MAKE ME THROW UP OH I HAVE NO SKILLS).

I'm reassessing my own relationship to this blog because I STUPIDLY had some reviews come across my path and it made me feel really, really terrible about myself, and I am dealing with that. And how it's manifested, in one way, is me have to rethink about criticism in general, and what any one person's thoughts about seeing one performance of a show has to do with anything.

I'm a compulsive consumer of theatre criticism and maybe I should give that up. I obviously can't deal with it in relationship to myself, as much as I think it's valuable. So, I'm not sure what my own opinions about theatre should mean to anyone else. Of course, I don't review. I talk about my own experiences in a way that is completely subjective and compromised by the fact that I am telling my own story the way I see it, and by the fact that I am weird. Sasquatch.

I don't review theatre because I don't think artists should review the community that they're trying to be a part of. Also, like, who am I? Oy, reviews. I shouldn't have read them. Lesson learned.

It's amazing how people throw you away, the things that reviewers think they have a right to comment on, how quick people are to trample on you. i don't know why I didn't know this before.

My paranoia has become a bit crazy doing this show. I'm very worried about what everyone thinks of me. The feeling that I get, or the feeling that I'm creating, is that no one thinks I'm doing a good job and no one wants to be near me because I am untalented. I'm not sure how real any of it is. It's made me reassess whether I'm strong enough to continue in this profession (Everyone I have ever met says: OF COURSE YOU ARE NOT, GO BACK TO HIDING UNDER THE COVERS, YOU STRANGE AND INSECURE BEAST).

Now writing this I wish that I had been more diligent about recording my feelings through the run of the show, but really, it has just been a lot of fear. Happiness and gratitude sometimes, but those are the small positive voices rallying from deep within a pit of insecurity. They seem very weak.

I'm trying very hard. It's not always enough. 

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?

Like Rama lama lama, de ding a de ding de ding.

Week one (preview week) down.

We continue to tinker and refine and while this initially was worrying me, afraid that all the changes would exceed my incredibly limited cranial capacity, things are kind of starting to make sense. I think this is moving towards a sense of my ownership of the work and the part. There were places that I felt were going in an opposite direction to the ideas that I initially came in thinking, but now it seems that they're returning there anyway.

We've been talking a lot about 'integration', about bringing things together, and I think that is happening, to a very small degree. Things are making sense. When they aren't, I'm trying new approaches to them, and then, even if it's in ways I can't describe, they're making a bit of sense. I think the play is integrating and I"m integrating into the play. There are still crunchy moments, and challenges, and all of that, but...there's also moments that settle and crackle and good good good.

Daniel has said again and again, 'The play knows more than I do', and it's a good thought to hold on to. The actor's or director's work as being to get out of the plays' way. That's hard. I'm oh so smart and just want to spread a thick layer of JESS all over everything!

It's that balance, for me which is most pointedly marked in pace. I have to give each word weight, take my time, and I also have to jump my own cues, keep the ball in the air. The balance of letting the play be and moving the play along. Helping it to reveal itself. The play is revealing itself to me more and more every night. Lots of new things to think about and live in and experience with the audience (even if, like today's audience, that also means experiencing their cell phones. Guy).

I think (THINK) it is coming together.

And now, a moment of vanity.

When I'm So Jittery My Knees Buckle

The first audience came. Tonight, that's followed by the second audience. I expect it will be followed by the third audience, but you really never can tell.

Tonight they're the first paying audience. We continue to make changes. I continue to doubt. But I continue to show up every day and keep going, and I think that is something, yes?

Paranoid that people aren't liking me and aren't telling me, but, I guess that is more about me than it is about what anyone else says. I'm not sure though. I'm not sure about very much in regards to this. I am well aware that I know nothing, so maybe that isn't that surprising, but normally I have more to go on. This time...not sure. I guess it's all very new. And scary. And exciting.

Like Charity Hope Valentine, I just am trying to tell myself 'I"m the bravest individual'. All that stuff.

It's World Theatre Day. John Malkovich said this statement below. I really like the part about rigour. I may lack talent, but I don't lack rigour, when it comes to theatre. So maybe there's hope for me yet!

I'm honored to have been asked by the International Theatre Institute ITI at UNESCO to give this greeting commemorating the 50th anniversary of World Theatre Day. I will address my brief remarks to my fellow theatre workers, peers and comrades.

May your work be compelling and original. May it be profound, touching, contemplative, and unique. May it help us to reflect on the question of what it means to be human, and may that reflection be blessed with heart, sincerity, candor, and grace. May you overcome adversity, censorship, poverty and nihilism, as many of you will most certainly be obliged to do. May you be blessed with the talent and rigor to teach us about the beating of the human heart in all its complexity, and the humility and curiosity to make it your life's work. And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, "how do we live?" Godspeed.

- John Malkovich

Although How Can You Know Who You Are Til You Know What You Want Which You Don't?

This is the last day of tech week, which has brought a lot of changes. Tech, obviously, a set, costumes, and audiences. Slowly trickling in at first, comprised of other team members, who are supportive but still scary in their judgement, and now invited individuals, today a whole invited audience, and then previews.

We can keep rehearsing and making changes throughout previews, so we haven't been set loose yet, but it's still a new level and very scary.

There's a wonderful part of 'Waiting for Guffman', among many wonderful parts, where Catherine O'Hara talks about Fred Willard's encouragement to her as an actor: 'He's trying to get me to change my instincts, or at least ignore them'.

Let's be honest, the whole thing is joy:

That's a little bit how I feel right now. I want to change and ignore all my instincts. I'm so unsure about the whole shebang that I'm not sure what I can trust in myself. It all feels like Jello. I try things and they feel different but I'm not always sure what's good different and what's bad different. And my good is different from what's good for the play, and sometimes that's different than what's good for the director, or good for the script, or good for the audience.

Trust is the most important thing but it's hard to know what to trust. Especially myself. I think I have to have confidence that I will be fine and I will, even, be good, or better, but how can I trust myself when I know what a wreck I really am. How can you believe someone who you see the flaws of all the time?

Trust and doubt in equal measure. Difficult. There are these impossible double things about theatre, that we find the things that work and then we have to find them again, while still letting things be natural and new, that we must question and push but also trust. That we have to have our cake and eat it too.

And then, we strive after something that is untenable, that we can only achieve in glimpses and shadows and gasps that happen once and can't again. And all of these glimpses and shadows and gasps are successful in one way of looking at something that is prismatic in its options, that appeal to one audience member or critic or actor, but that person is only a person, even if they're a person who can ruin your career or break your heart, and what is 'right' anyway, when we're all so deeply flawed.

Last night coming out of rehearsal after three long days I was walking in the rain to the subway and I just started sobbing. Tears wouldn't come out but I felt this intense pressure in my chest that came out as if I was crying. I think it was that feeling of being completely overwhelmed. It's hard to be in a room with so many of the people who made you want to do theatre in the first place, and then to think that you're ruining the play for them, or that they'll never want to let you act again.

I really have been questioning whether I can handle the challenges of this career. I don't know if I have the strength, and I'm pretty sure I don't have the talent. I think, now, that the strength is much more important. I'm fascinated by the questions that this art form raises and what we're trying to do and how we can do it and whether we're successful in it, but maybe I should do it from a different place in the room.... from the audience instead of on the stage.

Doubt. Questions. Tears. Insecurity. Anxiety. Yup. This is what it is before the curtain goes up and we all fall down.

The work today is to work less hard. To let go. To stand backstage and before I go on, just tell myself, 'I'm alive'.

A dance belt and a tube of chapstick:

Ma Nature's Lyrical with her Yearly Miracle

We had our last day in our space....

Now we are moved into the thee-ah-tah.

Change is terrifying but so is stasis, especially in acting. Embrace, embrace. Going through moments, after three weeks of work, where I look at myself and go, 'What am I doing? What is this about?' So many things I'm realizing. Tricky.

This is Buddy and he's in charge.

Our room was lovely and bright and the theatre is, still lovely, but distinctly not bright. What a strange thing it is, to walk into these darkened rooms and expect enlightenment. But it's what I do all day. What a weird duck. No wonder I'm not married.

Amazingly, moving on to the set feels like moving home. The play belongs there. This is good.

It's still scary though. This play is about identity, what you make yourself and why you make yourself that thing and the identities that we cling to and the identities we push away for ourselves. The acting in real life, I suppose. What we are pretending to be living so that we don't have to feel the pain of what life is. Which, to me, strikes so clearly at the feeling of being fraudulent.

I felt extraordinarily fraudulent when I was in academia, just that I had no clue what was going on and was to be found out at any minute. Everyone was so smart and I was so very dumb. And really, this is the same. Everyone is so talented and creative and I am still the chorus girl who is in the play out of pity. What I understand about the play, or what I'm doing, is one fraction of the possibility that's there, and one fraction of what the audience might see. There's so much more to find and to know and to show. Everyone must be able to see this weakness in me. I still feel like I'm about to be found out at any minute. Going into the theatre heightens this. I pretend to be a person worthy of this show and this theatre. I act as if my heart isn't jumping out of my chest. I find the identity of who I am in a given room and put it on like a sweater.

I wonder if this stops. Ever.

This play is also about spring. Which it is today.