April 3, 2009

It had been a long time since I awakened with light already in the sky. I suppose it was exhaustion. It certainly wasn’t the extended dream of being in a train station and unable to but a ticket to New York. Every time as I approached the window, they would close or there would be some crisis. Once I was given a ticket, but it became miraculously invalid.

Both Christina and Adam were theater kids, growing up in the theater, playing children’s roles, laboring backstage. Christina went away and became a park ranger–my own dream job when I was a kid–but returns, when she can, for love of the theater. I stood in the dark waiting for my cue, realizing that I feel no “love for the theater,” no nostalgia for plays past nor affection for the customs and apparatus of the stage. I almost never “have to do a show” to get my emotional hit. When I am inspired to do a role, it’s because I am curious– “how would it feel to do that character?’ or because friends of mine will be in the production, or because some consideration of arts politics makes it prudent. Or because I’m asked. At this point I have reduced interest in the how but a huge one in the what; the details of backstage life don’t engage me, but the qualities of the finished product do. Being a playwright contributes to this, no doubt, desiring to see your vision realized perfectly, and not be a source of those backstage yarns about what all went wrong and how we went up and the lights fell on the stage, and how hilarious it was to everyone but the one whose vision was being ruined. I hate Bailiwick still for what they did to Anna Livia, and I bet there’s a wealth of anecdotes for those involved to chuckle over deep into their dotage.

The preview last night was wonderful for innovation and energy, I thought, but bore great gaps of flubbed lines, one of them caused by me, where I had never, of course, staggered before. The crowd was small and receptive. The opening tonight has 100 reservations, and I hope their engagement swells with their numbers.

HART’s next show is a children’s musical based on The Ugly Duckling, and Adam and I have to carve out little niches for ourselves in the dressing room amid the props and bits of set and duck costumes.