November 4, 2017

Radiant summer/fall. A blanket of drowsy exhaustion settles on me, so that thought or action of any kind seems far off and irksome. It’s like moving through warm mist, not unpleasant, but perplexing. The medicine I take to reduce the inflammation in my joints adds to it, but it had settled in somewhat before I took the pill. Almost had to leave rehearsal for the Brahms this morning because of side stitches, cramps in my fingers, and a half-dizzy exhaustion that I thought would make me pass out, but in the end didn’t. Part of it is dehydration, something one often does not think to foresee until it is too late.

Bought furniture at Village Antiques, giving the people there cards for Uranium 235, and I’ll be damned if one of them didn’t actually show up last night with his whole family in tow. Thursday night performance left me in limbo. I had no idea whether the audience had enjoyed it, or whether it was any good– observation without judgment, a shoulder-shrugging blank. Last night, though, was triumphant. Dinner with A and S at the Bull and Beggar, then a show that was alive, funny, compelling. I could feel the pleasure of the audience. General Groves went absolutely up at the beginning of his scene and never came back; Truman saved the scene by soldiering forward undismayed, asking and answering as, perhaps, such a man would. All Groves had to do was answer the questions he was being feed, but his panic was so great he couldn’t think of that, or rather answered exactly wrong, as if it were Opposite Night on the Magnetic stage. I doubt anyone noticed but me. The playwright wants to say, “Just get the words right; that’s all that really matters.” It is my experience that such a thing almost never happens. But still– for last night, triumph. Maybe in some ways the purest triumph of my career as a playwright, in that nobody was walking out with gloom on their face.

Pissed because people can’t buy tickets for my show without being offered tickets for the upcoming Christmas feature. The people who produce the Christmas piece are the people who mind the web-page, so protest is probably futile.

A few hours left to beat myself into consciousness before official opening night.