A Typical Day
...is a little crazy. I am joining the ranks of Houston actors who work multiple shows at once. This is a typical day at the moment.6am - alarm goes off. Lucas and I are trying a little trick to help us feel more connected to each other, which is spending four minutes at four points in the day focusing on nothing but each other. The first point is supposed to be as soon as we wake up, which is very challenging and neither of us are very awake. Or if we are, we're not very pleased about it.
7am - call time at Main Street Theater. Get in the tour van with stage manager and five other actors. Do hair (wig prep) and makeup in the van. One of the lovely things about touring with a stage manager (which I didn't have in my tour job in Australia) is that they drive, and I can zone out.
9am - one or two shows at an elementary school. Contemplate fabulous patent-leather bright-red high heels and quell voice in back of brain that says it's too early in the morning for such shoes. Don said shoes and wig and become Ms Frizzle. "Have you heard of our teacher, Ms Frizzle?....the Magic School Bus...come with us on our bus and we'll learn about it....tiny stuff matters....the way it could be (imagine the world you're determined to see)...going green....our wonderful world!" (See, you just got your own little private performance right there.)
11am - on a high from performance, get out of costume, throw hat on to cover wig hair, reload van, hop back in it, still laughing and joking with other cast members, and drive away. At some point, my body comes down from that high and I get cold, tired and ravenously hungry. Laughing and joking peters out.
noon - get back home. Spend the next few hours in a daze. I'm not entirely sure what it is I do in the afternoon. Go over music for Company rehearsal? Theoretically, yes. Work on writing/casting/preparing Hope Stone Kids show? Theoretically, yes. Sleeping, binge eating and watching The West Wing? Definitely, yes.
5pm - teach weekly class at Hope Stone.
6pm - begin the trek out to Texas Repertory Theatre in Houston's famous traffic.
7pm - rehearsal at Tex Rep for Company by Stephen Sondheim. Enjoy but also get frustrated by the challenge of such difficult music, with a bunch of actors (myself included) who find it very hard to remember that the world is not all about us, and that therefore my comments/questions/jokes about every single bar of music is possibly not as useful to a congenial rehearsal atmosphere as we think it should be.
midnight - get home, go to bed. Find it difficult to sleep with the opening bars of Company so loud in my head I think Lucas must be calling me Bobby.
I am so grateful for the opportunities I have to work in Houston (getting paid to do Sondheim? Whaaaa-?), but right now am finding it difficult to manage said workload! I'm not the only person in Company to also be working a kids' show during the day, and in fact I'm not even the only person in Company to also be in Magic School Bus. And that other person somehow manages to work at a costume shop in the afternoons. And have fabulous hair while he does it. Damn you, Zack.
Lucas has been challenging me recently to be more present and not always focused on the next task, because it takes away my enjoyment of each moment, and also makes him feel like I don't value time with him. I will make this work, or alternatively just be in a daze until Company closes in April. See you all then!
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