First Impressions

I was late. Driving from Eden Prairie to Anoka during rush hour (shouldn't rush hour be over by 6:30?) is a tedious venture. The first day of school butterflies were eating each other in my stomach which was a nuisance. That is the technical term for them, by the way; the technical term for the effect they produce is called "high school cafeteria syndrome." The obvious symptom is a regression in thought processes back to said high school cafeteria days. "Will my friends be there? Will I be able to make new friends? Who will I sit with? Will they like me? Will everyone else already have friends? Will there be any picking of teams or pairing off into twos? Will there be an even number? Will I have to be partners with the teacher? Am I dressed right? What do I do with my hands?" That sort of thing.

Someone else was just pulling in when I finally got there, which was nice because I had no idea where to go, and it was very nice to not have to walk into a room of strangers alone. She was obviously not a stranger to the theater and was happy to help me find my way to the rehearsal room. Chairs were arranged in a little circle and I fell into one across from "the Beauty" I had been chummy with at callbacks. Apart from her and the woman I had followed in from the parking lot, I hadn't met anyone else. Unless you count the director, who I couldn't say I had "met" considering I still hadn't managed to have a conversation with her where I had any idea what I was saying. I gave Beauty a little wave and a smile and was relieved to have them returned. One new friend in the bag. There were twelve of us in total and at the time it was impossible to guess what our age range was - but whatever the range, it was thorough. There were two "younger" guys and couple of "older" men and some "middle aged" adults and two "young" women and then me and another guy - I have no idea where 30ish falls on the age barometer - maybe someone who is either 15 or 50 can fill in that blank for me.

I was curious to know if I would discover any of them to be Christians. I had a hunch that there might be some lurking about. Possibly real Christians. I'm trying to remember right now what made me think that...maybe it was a t-shirt someone was wearing at auditions...maybe it was something about an e-mail address I had seen...maybe it was something my mother-in-law had mentioned about the owners of the theater...whatever it was, I was looking for it. I'm always looking for Christians. Real Christians. Not Easter and Christmas Christians, or even every Sunday Christians, or American Christians, or Catholic (or Lutheran or Baptist etc) Christians, but real live bible thumping, yearning for Jesus Christians. And when I say bible thumping, I mean it like Thumper in Bambi I guess..."I'm thumpin', and that's why they call me Thumper"...like, I can't help but thump because it's just so good, but I'm not going to thump you upside the head. And when I say yearning for Jesus, I mean a bone deep aching love and yearning. Like the kind that Bella Swan has for Edward Cullen or that Gollum has for his "precious" but in a good way and magnified a million times. These kind of Christians are awfully hard to come by - particularly in a politically correct secular office environment or *gasp* The Theater. Of course, I like to think that I am one of them...but I'm afraid I keep it on the down-low to a fairly shameful degree, so who knows, we're probably everywhere.

I was also very curious to discover how this theater experience would be different than those I knew twelve years ago. The former days, as wonderful as they were, did serve to feed my vanity; they gave me purpose and meaning and value. And I'm well aware at this point in my life that charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting and therefore vanity is not something worth feeding. No matter how much you feed it, it is going to betray you and leave you more desperate than you ever imagined possible. I had landed in that desperate place and was allowed to rise up from it clean and safe and less desperate than I ever imagined possible. So, I was curious to discover what theater life would be like on this side of grace.

We started the read through event with (horror of horrors) an ice breaker. Thankfully, it didn't involve removing our shoes or telling about our first kiss or anything like that. It was a Tupperware party sort of ice breaker - "Tell us your name, whether this is your first time acting at this theater, and...umm...your favorite kind of ice cream." I much prefer to be at the beginning of these circles. I was sort of in the middle, which gave the first day of school butterflies ample opportunity to start feasting once again. Ugh. What would I say? Could I come up with something witty and clever? Something that would win their hearts for all of time? I like all ice creams! It's not right to make me choose a favorite! It passed rather painlessly, I have no recollection of any one's favorite ice cream. I think that one lady was jotting it all down - unfortunately it was not for purposes of surprising us on a random occasion with custom selected ice cream treats. What was very nice to discover was that many of us were in the same situation in that we had never acted at this theater before. A few had, of course, and some had even been in plays there together. The familiarity that they shared wasn't the sort infused with inside jokes and other pretentiousness...it was more a reflection of the camaraderie that I hoped the future held for all of us.

It was strange to survey a circle of twelve people that I did not know yet, knowing that I would become increasingly intimate with them in the weeks to come, and then would possibly drift away from many of them (if not all) forever. There is a bittersweetness about the whole experience...but it is something I would not trade for all the world.

No Small Parts

They said the cast would be posted online that Tuesday. At least that's how I remember it. At 7 AM on Tuesday they had not yet posted anything. Artsy-fartsies simply cannot be trusted. I checked the website with obsessive consistency throughout the day. I kept trying to limit myself to once every half hour...but five minutes after I checked I would think, "They might have just posted it." And so I would check again. I really didn't know how it would work. Would they call the winners first, or would they really just announce them online? There were three plays to cast...would they be casting the same people in multiple roles? That would certainly decrease the odds. It was maddening, the waiting, the not knowing. That night when I was about to crawl into bed heartsick with grief, my phone rang. It was the director of one of the plays. She was offering me a part. "It's a small part," she said, "I would call it a character part. I think you would appear about three times. Is that something you would be interested in?" My heart was pounding and I could feel my face burning. Now here is the stupid thing. The human ego is really a monstrous thing and the heart of a man (or woman) is wicked beyond any comprehension. My first gut reaction was to be disappointed that I wasn't being offered a starring role. As my wise husband reminded me later when I confessed this gross little foible, "You didn't even think you would get a callback." Over the sound of blood rushing through my ears, I heard my voice answer correctly, "Yes, I would be very interested." She gave me information about when the first read through of the script would be and I hung up the phone. I was fairly irritated with myself to realize that I hadn't thanked her, nor had I any recollection whatsoever of what her name was.

My sister-in-law saw the official announcement online before I did and she emailed me with congratulations and a reminder to print the page. I was excited to see that one of the girls I had met at callbacks was cast as "the beauty." I wasn't even jealous. We older, wiser women must pass the torch to the younger generation, mustn't we? With all gentleness, humility and maturity. Bah. But honestly, I was thrilled to know that I would already have a friend.

It was really only a matter of a day or so before I had a more proper perspective on the situation. Dan was so right! I had been convinced that the audition had completely bombed and in spite of that, I was now going to be on STAGE! It was finally really truly going to happen. The size of the part couldn't possibly matter. One of my favorite theater memories is of playing a courtesan in "A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." I had no lines and was on stage for all of 30 seconds, but the memories I have are of the fun we girls had in rehearsals learning our courtesan dances and of doing the Charleston backstage during performances while we waited for our cues. The experience as a whole is ultimately worth so much more than the number of lines. In fact (and this may just be more psychological hooey), it's possible that getting a small part gave me a greater opportunity to connect with the rest of the cast on in a way that might not have been possible if I'd had a million lines to worry about memorizing. Or even fifteen lines.