Gilgamesh Opening Night

February 23, 2008

I’m going to stop having opinions about plays and how they’re going to play and how they’ll fly on opening night, for again, last night, Gilgamesh was triumphant against my misgivings. It’s not that I don’t trust the gods of the theater; it’s just that I’m astonished when they bestow their blessings on me. I sat in my back pew mesmerized, as though I’d never seen it before, as though I were a ten year old at a fairy tale. Gilgamesh is a fairy tale, and the power of that medium reached through it without any assistance, or even consciousness, on my part. The house was not full, but it was responsive and it was they who first telegraphed to me that we had another success.

At the raffle, and Ed Cawley won my painting, Twilight in the Emerald City.

The Usual afterwards, where we mingled with the cast of Moonlight and Magnolias. Ron Bashford’s unexpected kindliness beamed to all corners of the table. I am too private to be totally comfortable in a situation like that, twenty people at a bunch of tables pushed together, the loudest mob in the house, but I was loud enough myself, and I was happy walking home afterward, drunk under the cloudy moon, my ears ringing with voices in the cool, wet dark.