1) Our lighting designer is really sick. She didn’t show up for cue-to-cue on Monday because she was in the hospital. Barry helped a little, but it wasn’t satisfactory. Good thing we had others’ help. Hope you get better soon, Celina!
2) I got soooooooo distracted during Tech Dress because the stage management crew wasn’t doing their job. I really wanted to instruct them to do this and that (because I know that’s what should happen having been through this countless times) but I can’t!!! It’s not my place to do so, and Stevie would kill me if I go all techie… I am an ACTOR in this show. ACTOR. Not tech/crew. ACTOR. Or so I keep telling myself.
If I see the back curtain all messy, I sneak to the back, lift the pole that’s weighing it down, pulls the masking straight, stand up quickly, and hope no one notices me. Afterall, I AM AN ACTOR. I shouldn’t be fixing the curtains, I shouldn’t be peeling spike tape off the floor, and I really shouldn’t care about what the eff the stage management team is doing. BUT when they’re not doing their job… anyway, I shouldn’t be saying this. Nor should I be judging… It was just bothering me soooo much to the point that it took me out of my character for the entire tech dress. I was entirely out of it for that run and I totally did Petra injustice by playing her so badly.
After the run, we were sent back to large dress for notes as the other group did their run in the black box. I felt ashamed and embarrassed that I was in a room with hard-working and well-trained actors because I had let them down. I didn’t dare meet their eyes. If my skin was transparent, you’d probably see a fight inside my body: my blood rushing through my veins telling me to just do it all the while my brain is sending signals down my nerves to tell my body to calm down. It was an internal struggle, and I tried to vent, but telling the other actors of course didn’t help (they were being too easy on the SMs —or am I being too harsh?). So I just shut the hell up and kept it to myself. I tried running in the hallway, I tried singing Sleepsong in the stairwell where it echoed well, and I tried retreating in a corner to practice my lines to calm myself. None helped.
Then it came time for us to go back into the space again to rework some stuff (we didn’t have time to run through the entire play again). Thank god Ray took control of the lights so while he was fixing some cues, I grabbed Stevie and talked to her in the dark. I told her that I was having a hard time letting go of my techie instincts, and that it’s bothering me so much to the point that I cannot focus or bring myself in in the playing space. Having been through this numerous times herself (and having been on both sides of the table), she understood what I was going through. A spiel of rants and a couple of hugs later, I felt better. At least I was able to focus when it came time to go back on stage again.
Later that night we basically did what we were supposed to do the night before: cue-to-cue. We fixed a lot of lighting cues and were sent home. I, however, volunteered myself to be a ’stand-in’ even though it was already quarter to eleven at night. So I stayed. I took my wrench, got on a ladder, hung a light and focused it. I could tell my techie skills needed some polishing, as I had forgotten to unplug before loosening the c-clamp. Nevertheless that hour and a half of playing around with lights and gobos was exactly what I needed to kick the techie instinct aside.
It no longer affected my acting tonight at Dress Rehearsal (well, partly because Gary was there -on headset- and partly because there was an audience). But I was able to overlook the things that was making me uneasy and just focus on being Petra. I was still nervous though, this time because I was performing, for the first time ever, in front of an audience!
[Whew, they don't call them directors for nothing! If I didn't talk to Stevie then, I think I would have had an actor's nervous breakdown]