(no subject)
So Threepenny is over, as of last night.
My family and Corey both came to visit, which has been awesomeness of a profunditude inexpressible in mere words. Corey's hair is beginning to rival Lady Godiva's, her rock-climbing forearm muscles inspire awe and some terror, and she still makes all the hilarious faces I missed so much. My brother's post-surgery scars are cool, and he seems to be enjoying going around flashing everyone -- I always knew he had an exhibitionist streak that had simply gone into hibernation from when he was two or so and refused to wear clothing at all. I was so happy to see my beloved fraternal and parental units, I couldn't stop grinning at them and snuggling them. God I hope I live in the same city as my family again one day.
Our final show was easily the largest and best audience so far -- they were so responsive, they laughed and gasped at things that we had forgotten were funny or significant. I finally felt mostly healthy, and didn't have coughing attacks every time I came offstage. I did manage to stab my beloved Polly in the neck during the Jealousy Duet, lost my pregnancy pillow under the divan just before Solomon Song, got poked in the eye by Macheath when he was making love to me in the jail scene, and -- best of all -- somehow contrived to get my nose tangled in my crucifix at the end of the poisoning aria. You wouldn't think it could be done, but it can!
I'd found chocolate coins printed like enormous pennies online, ordered a pound of them, and with the help of my brother made little neatly wrapped and beribboned bags of three pennies each for each of the cast members. (Surprisingly few people got the joke. Dweebs.) Writing little love notes to go with them made me realize just how many people there are in this cast who I will miss seeing every day, with whom I have inside jokes and cuddling rights and flirty fun and all kinds of other wonderfulness.
I will also miss performing. Dammit, I have so much fun when I'm onstage. I honestly had forgotten just how much until doing this show.
Oddly, the thing I really won't miss (besides the constant drain on my time and energy) is all the praise I've been getting. I've lost count (okay, I wasn't ever keeping count, but still) of the number of people who have told me that despite the smallness of my role I was their favorite part of the show. Random people approach me in the library or the halls and tell me how much they enjoyed my performance. Cast members and instrumentalists keep passing on praise from friends and family. Almost every single theater faculty member has sought me out to talk to me and tell me they were impressed and wish I'd gotten involved more in the theater department before this semester. My parents overheard two girls gossiping (nicely) about me during intermission yesterday. If I were getting one quarter of this attention, it would be a lovely ego boost and I would just feel really happy that I'd given a good performance. And quite possibly all this is just par for the course in the Mac theater department, i wouldn't know. But all these superlatives are sort of messing with my head. Whenever I hear too much nice stuff about me, a switch flips in my brain -- I feel as though people are describing someone else entirely, or as though I've temporarily FOOLED people into believing that I'm attractive or smart or talented or charismatic or (insert positive attribute here) but that at any moment I'm going to screw up and they'll realize it was just a fluke and... what, tar and feather me? I have no idea. All I know is that praise in the quantity I've been getting it lately scares me and (paradoxically) makes me dislike myself and see the bad stuff and the failures all the more clearly. So yeah, I'll be glad to go back to feeling less... visible. I dunno.
There was a cast party last night which descended (ascended?) into scenes of the nicest possible kind of debauchery. My baby (almost eighteen year-old) brother was present for all of it, although he did not get drunk, nor was he molested by any lusty theater people, thank god. But he and I only got about an hour or two of sleep in the end, because we got up to have a very sleepy breakfast together as a family at Coffee News before they left to catch their plane. After I bid them goodbye I went home and had a bath and meant to go back to bed again, but ended up lounging around in the nude chatting with Corey for two hours instead. Then I went to the theater for the 3PO strike, for which I mostly climbed around in the 'clouds' (the network of platforms way high up above the stage from which lights and sets are hung) and was inept with a wrench, and slightly less inept at coiling extensive quantities of cable, thanks to careful early childhood training from my engineer father.
Strike and post-show chat were over by 5, after which I went home and tried to crash/do some homework before the performance of Alex's directing project at 7:30, except I only managed to sleep for about half an hour. Ran over there, did the scenes, resolved with uta_o_utau never ever again to be in something directed by our beloved Alex, who for all his extensive gifts as an actor, a mimic, and a giver of impromptu back rubs, cannot direct his way out of a paper bag.
Ran over to my favorite music professor's house, since he was hosting our performance/interpretation theory class for dinner, followed by a discussion about the Future of the Department -- things are getting shaken up around here next year, he'll be taking over as department chair, and since the class is packed with some of the smartest and most invested senior and junior majors, he offered us the chance to start giving him feedback about a possible semi-redesign of the major. The food was delicious and so was the conversation. His dog (a 13 year-old golden lab named Fafner) and his two oldest daughters (Sophie, 10 and Claudia, 4) are adorable.
So that was the weekend, more or less. Now I'm finally really, truly crashing, and even though I haven't finished the German stuff I urgently need to finish, I think it might be time for bed.
My family and Corey both came to visit, which has been awesomeness of a profunditude inexpressible in mere words. Corey's hair is beginning to rival Lady Godiva's, her rock-climbing forearm muscles inspire awe and some terror, and she still makes all the hilarious faces I missed so much. My brother's post-surgery scars are cool, and he seems to be enjoying going around flashing everyone -- I always knew he had an exhibitionist streak that had simply gone into hibernation from when he was two or so and refused to wear clothing at all. I was so happy to see my beloved fraternal and parental units, I couldn't stop grinning at them and snuggling them. God I hope I live in the same city as my family again one day.
Our final show was easily the largest and best audience so far -- they were so responsive, they laughed and gasped at things that we had forgotten were funny or significant. I finally felt mostly healthy, and didn't have coughing attacks every time I came offstage. I did manage to stab my beloved Polly in the neck during the Jealousy Duet, lost my pregnancy pillow under the divan just before Solomon Song, got poked in the eye by Macheath when he was making love to me in the jail scene, and -- best of all -- somehow contrived to get my nose tangled in my crucifix at the end of the poisoning aria. You wouldn't think it could be done, but it can!
I'd found chocolate coins printed like enormous pennies online, ordered a pound of them, and with the help of my brother made little neatly wrapped and beribboned bags of three pennies each for each of the cast members. (Surprisingly few people got the joke. Dweebs.) Writing little love notes to go with them made me realize just how many people there are in this cast who I will miss seeing every day, with whom I have inside jokes and cuddling rights and flirty fun and all kinds of other wonderfulness.
I will also miss performing. Dammit, I have so much fun when I'm onstage. I honestly had forgotten just how much until doing this show.
Oddly, the thing I really won't miss (besides the constant drain on my time and energy) is all the praise I've been getting. I've lost count (okay, I wasn't ever keeping count, but still) of the number of people who have told me that despite the smallness of my role I was their favorite part of the show. Random people approach me in the library or the halls and tell me how much they enjoyed my performance. Cast members and instrumentalists keep passing on praise from friends and family. Almost every single theater faculty member has sought me out to talk to me and tell me they were impressed and wish I'd gotten involved more in the theater department before this semester. My parents overheard two girls gossiping (nicely) about me during intermission yesterday. If I were getting one quarter of this attention, it would be a lovely ego boost and I would just feel really happy that I'd given a good performance. And quite possibly all this is just par for the course in the Mac theater department, i wouldn't know. But all these superlatives are sort of messing with my head. Whenever I hear too much nice stuff about me, a switch flips in my brain -- I feel as though people are describing someone else entirely, or as though I've temporarily FOOLED people into believing that I'm attractive or smart or talented or charismatic or (insert positive attribute here) but that at any moment I'm going to screw up and they'll realize it was just a fluke and... what, tar and feather me? I have no idea. All I know is that praise in the quantity I've been getting it lately scares me and (paradoxically) makes me dislike myself and see the bad stuff and the failures all the more clearly. So yeah, I'll be glad to go back to feeling less... visible. I dunno.
There was a cast party last night which descended (ascended?) into scenes of the nicest possible kind of debauchery. My baby (almost eighteen year-old) brother was present for all of it, although he did not get drunk, nor was he molested by any lusty theater people, thank god. But he and I only got about an hour or two of sleep in the end, because we got up to have a very sleepy breakfast together as a family at Coffee News before they left to catch their plane. After I bid them goodbye I went home and had a bath and meant to go back to bed again, but ended up lounging around in the nude chatting with Corey for two hours instead. Then I went to the theater for the 3PO strike, for which I mostly climbed around in the 'clouds' (the network of platforms way high up above the stage from which lights and sets are hung) and was inept with a wrench, and slightly less inept at coiling extensive quantities of cable, thanks to careful early childhood training from my engineer father.
Strike and post-show chat were over by 5, after which I went home and tried to crash/do some homework before the performance of Alex's directing project at 7:30, except I only managed to sleep for about half an hour. Ran over there, did the scenes, resolved with uta_o_utau never ever again to be in something directed by our beloved Alex, who for all his extensive gifts as an actor, a mimic, and a giver of impromptu back rubs, cannot direct his way out of a paper bag.
Ran over to my favorite music professor's house, since he was hosting our performance/interpretation theory class for dinner, followed by a discussion about the Future of the Department -- things are getting shaken up around here next year, he'll be taking over as department chair, and since the class is packed with some of the smartest and most invested senior and junior majors, he offered us the chance to start giving him feedback about a possible semi-redesign of the major. The food was delicious and so was the conversation. His dog (a 13 year-old golden lab named Fafner) and his two oldest daughters (Sophie, 10 and Claudia, 4) are adorable.
So that was the weekend, more or less. Now I'm finally really, truly crashing, and even though I haven't finished the German stuff I urgently need to finish, I think it might be time for bed.