June 29, 2016

Good rehearsal last night, though I made, and will continue to opening night to make, gaping mistakes. In all my theater experience I have never had a lead in a musical before. It’s very different from the relative freedom and expansiveness of straight acting, where you don’t have to count the beats.

Enormous swollen leg almost ripped through my suit pants.

Rose, worked on the tiger play, went, on a whim, to the Nature Center. Two girls were anxious that I pet a female box turtle, then wash my hands afterward. Wanted to see Puma concolor, and saw it. The black bear was unexpectedly enormous. As I exited I ran into Sy Safranski. We chatted. Without remembering who he was at first, I marked him from the crowd because his wife was hanging on him and he was surrounded by a cloud of loving females, from wife to granddaughters. He is a kind and happy man, and so universally beloved. After we parted, I walked to my car contemplating why one person is universally beloved and another not, all outward things being, apparently, equivalent. Bought a T-shirt and a lemonade. Napped. Sit in the fan now, writing in the ambiguous summer hush before evening.