Take Another Little Piece of My Heart

And so it is over. And I miss my surrogate family something terrible.

I do so want to write something tremendous...something that will do justice to the joy I have known these past brief weeks...and to the turmoil I feel now. But I fear the right words will not come. There were tears on my pillow last night as the faces of the children passed through my thoughts...the eyes and the smiles and the pouts and the braids and the hugs. Ah the hugs. The hugs will be most sorely missed. I dreamed of my favorite children last night. I've told each of them that they are my favorite...so that is all that need be said about the dream.

Perhaps a highlighting of some favorite moments will suffice:

• On opening night, we had a party afterwards that all in attendance were invited to attend. While chatting with Jim and his lovely wife Kelly, our youngest cast member was passing by. I patted him on the head and asked if he had had fun on this, his first opening night. He looked up at me with his giant bespectacled eyes and said, "I must be very popular because this is the seventh person to hold an interview with me tonight." He's eight.

• During a final dress rehearsal, Justin, our resident 10 year old attention monger, glanced at me while patting his checkered wool jacket. "Does this coat make me look fat?" He asked. This led to me periodically referring to his (non-existent) obesity...which he took in stride. On the last day of the show, I made a final remark about his mighty fatness to which he replied in feigned outrage: "Don't even go there with me! I lost 5 pounds for you!"

• After the final curtain, when tears and hugs and final photo ops were rampant. My eldest daughter, Ali, hugged me tightly and said, "You're the only old person I know who's cool."

• I love doing exaggerating my already prolific dorky tendencies with kids. Somehow being ultra nerdy seems to endear me to them. When signing in before a show, I wrote, "Check it, yo," in the space by my name. Later, when Brianna (15) was signing in, Alycia (17) was standing behind her and read, "Check it, yo," out loud. Brianna looked at her strangely and shrugged and then checked Alycia in. As if Alycia would ever talk so ghetto. Alycia laughed about that for a long time.

• As inevitable back stage romances started to bloom, theories abounded regarding some potential plot twists. On the last day, Ali showed up with a nine page sequel she had written the night before. Between the shows that day, we were all given a copy and trooped up to the stage to perform it. No one had read it in advance, so the plot twists were made known to all the moment they escaped our lips. It was glorious. I am still in utter awe of what she was able to come up with in one night.

There are so many more moments...many more poignant...many more subtle...but all so precious and not to be forgotten.

Snow Makes For Bad Traffic

Call is at 6:00 PM. The show starts at 7:00 PM. At 6:30 PM I was just merging onto 694 from 100 (as .5 mph), a good 20 minutes from the Theater...when there is NO traffic. I was screaming a lot, and weeping a little, and then praying a lot...begging the Lord who is sovereign over all - including traffic and weather - to PLEASE get me to the theater before 7. He did get me there before 7...about a minute before 7, but before 7 nonetheless. And I ran the block to the theater from where I was parked, in the snow (beautiful snow under other circumstances, but dirty, rotten, stinking, vile snow at the time), slid in the door, and promptly fell down the stairs. But I arose gloriously unscathed and, at a more gingerly pace, maneuvered my way to the dressing room where my darling family greeted me with hugs and smiles and cheers and love.

Most of the girls left the dressing room to give me space to get ready, but I asked a couple of them to stay and have a conversation in the corner to distract me from my shaking hands...and they did and I loved them for it. I managed to get my costume on and make-up and hair done in a miraculous 15 minutes, and so the curtain went up at 7:15 PM.

This was all last night (Friday night). Opening night was on Thursday, thankfully, and was absolutely spectacular. In my humble opinion. We were energized and excited and the show went really, really well. Friday night's show lacked some of that opening night magic. We missed a few lines, but covered them really well. I think the "off" bits were definitely noticed more by the cast than by the audience...at least, that is my hope. Afterwards, a couple of the girls were saying that typically, the second night of a run is the worst. So we delighted in the fact that we now have nowhere to go but up. I think it's probably good to have a little bit of an awkward performance (though not ideal by any means), to remind us that we can't stop trying and focusing and working...that the show wont perform itself...we have to invest ourselves fully in every performance. The actors carry the show...the show cannot carry the actors.

Preview Night

We had our first "audience" tonight. It consisted of about 16 people. They were pretty mellow. Still, I'm really glad we had those 16 devoted friends and family there to test our masterpiece on. If the other guests are anything like my beloved guest was, then many of us have been duly showered with praise and will go out on opening night ready to take on the world.

By Sunday night, I will have spent every evening of an entire week with my imaginary family in our imaginary world...and in the real world which (sometimes unfortunately) exists parallel to it. It's sort-of like living in my favorite kind of book - the kind where a separate and unfamiliar reality coexists right next door to the mundane. And I suppose, like all good stories, it is inevitable that this one will have to have an ending. At least, the imaginary part - the part that occurs on stage - will have to come to an end. But the reality of all the lives that have been mashed together will continue...and some of our lives will very possibly never be mashed together again. It's the one part of the theater that stinks.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around what life will look like when this is over. Even now, after weeks of rehearsing together, we grow closer and more familiar each time we are together. Claudia, our director, mentioned tonight how this group of kids is really phenomenal ... that there isn't the backstage drama that can so often accompany a cast of many children. I feel like we all just really like each other. When there are 12 women and girls all crammed into a tiny dressing room, there could be complete madness, but there isn't. Everyone is sharing tips on applying eyeliner and blush properly; everyone is zipping someone up, or braiding someones hair, or tying someones ribbons; there are inside jokes and encouragement and silliness and safety.

It's easy to forget that all these little girls and young women have lives outside our imaginary world that I know nothing about. I want to take care in every moment that I get with them to not waste foolish words or leave impressions of vanity and arrogance. I know from being 11 once, and then 13 and 15 and 17 that girls of any age really remember and carry through life some of the more cavalier words spoken by older women and I don't want to ever forget that. These are precious lives that mine is intermingled with for such a short time. It's a privilege not to be taken lightly.

Perfect Friend...Where is She Now?

I recently got a sweet blog visit from an anonymous stranger who said that she enjoys reading about my and Perfect Friend's adventures. Other friends and readers have asked about PF, and so it is about time that I provide an update as to her whereabouts and whatabouts.

Our mission to become professional auditioners has apparently served us well. Unfortunately, our grand success has kept us apart for far too long. I don't think we've seen each other for more than a few minutes since she and her hubby picked Dan and me up from the airport back in the first week of November. It seems so long ago that we were reading playing acting games with a Catherine monologue from The Foreigner script in preparation for our first ever "together" audition. While neither of us were cast in The Foreigner (although PF did get a callback ...as some may recall), we both felt a smug sense of satisfaction when we discovered who was cast, and thought "What the....??" I think that is fairly crummy of us, but it did make us feel better.

While I was enduring the waiting to hear if I would be cast in The Hanging of the Greens, PF spontaneously and entirely by her lonesome went to audition for a Christmas musical revue at the Woodbury Community Theater. She was called (on the way home from the audition, of course) and offered a part in the production. Apparently Perfect Friend doesn't have to wait more than 10 minutes to "hear" after an audition. Ironically, and somewhat tragically, our two shows both open tonight. We have realized that neither of us will have a chance to see the other's show, because we will both be performing at the same times over the next two weeks! The thought of that makes me smile as I write. I can't wait until tonight when I will be on stage and imagining PF on stage at the same time singing her perfect little heart out.