t'is, thank the gods, in the bag.


It went well! No huge mishaps, and i was SO humbled by the people who had such crazyawesome stuff to say to me afterward!

Even people I have known for a long time seemed to be genuinely impressed.

The most awesome compliment was form the Director's Mom, even, who said that I not only brought her to tears, or nearly so, not one not twice but three times during the show she paid like the ULTIMATE compliment in that she said that my "silences and moments of stillness were so completely present and alive and emotive as to be mesmerizing." Or something like that...she said a lot of things. A great many people did.

Yeah, that pretty much rocks, because I do a whole lord of sitting or standing and emoting, as though I am fucking doing something!

Which, I am. But for someone to notice it, YEAH!

John was there....yay! Pattu was thee too, and was my date and my date's date, so we all were covered :-P


Everyone seemed to stay awake throughout I was very proud.

I got flowers from the director AND from my roomie Susan, who isn't even in town but remembered, and sent me flowers!!!!




It was so amazing to get home to the flowers on my doorstep.

I feel truly, truly blessed.

now, only 16 more times.....

And heeeeeere's....TEH AUDIENCE!!!





Well, most of them. This was the view from the stage during our post-show "Talk-Back" and some people had run out to get a glass of wine or to go to the potty The "Oh God I am SO Bored" dude in the front row is NOT in this photo, which is too bad. I'd have shamed him right here.

Aside from raping and mangling 2 monologues and crunching my ankle during the country dance number, it went pretty well.

*sigh*

Since the show started at 5, and runs about 90 minutes (no intermission, feel THAT) even with the post show talk I found myself in Lush Cosmetics getting fresh bars of my special soaps (one of my few girly skin type indulgences) and pondering going to my Sunday night Big Gay AA meeting. I kind of did not want to go, but I knew I would feel worse if quizzed about why I did NOT attend, and besides I owed my Sponsor a greeting.

It was an OK meeting. I wound up "sharing" about how it was that, this week, I had had such a run-in with my self-hatred, and how I really feel as though I am starting to get some understanding of how to be more compassionate. I resisted my usual temptation to try to say something positive, because I do have the tendency to "pretty things up".

BUt i felt like I was honest, and one of the nice men who I have known since I started going to that meeting hugged me. A lot of people did, actually, and said that thy totally related to what I had to say. That made me feel so good, and less alone

Less uplifting was my brief chat with my sponsor thereafter. But it is their job to work the steps and so, I suppose, if your priority is not doing that, then they are not going to necessarily get on board with what you want to talk about that is not directly related to you having that 4th step all written out.

I dunno...I feel kind of gun shy because ... well, I just do.

I am a bit apprehensive about the show tomorrow.

Not horrible stage fright, just nervous. It will be the first time I have a "date" for opening night in MANY years, as John is coming to the show. I kinda have 2 dates, since Patti is coming too, because THAT is how I roll.

It will also be my first sober opening night since I was ... maybe 15? Ah, good old Bartyles & James wine coolers....

I am fairly certain that panic episodes are something fairly new for me. Usually, I get anxious …. OK, I don’t think I have a “Usually” anymore. Well, in the past, when I got anxious, I would usually just bitch about whatever it was making me anxious and get it off of my chest, and there it was. Or, pound a few shots and that would help.

Nowadays, I tend to feel as though I have to “be vigilant’ constantly lest my emotional state become too unstable. By unstable, what I mean is that I am having reactions that are wildly disproportionate to the situation and inappropriate in that they generate secondary an even tertiary reactions that are only damaging.

For example: someone asks me about my schedule, and I realize that I am opening the show in, like 3 days. Then I FULLY am impacted by the fact that my lines are still nebulous, in several scenes. Then I have a definite certainty that everyone in the show thinks I am entirely unprofessional and incapable of fulfilling my obligation. Then I question my capacity to be a performer at all…then the real fun begins as I have the physical reaction, which is, for me, the feeling of my skin being too tight and my brain completely being unable to focus or process any input, or generate any output.

If these things were happening for NO reason, I would seriously “get help”. But they are happening for a very concrete reason: I am having inordinate trouble with a specific job function, which is learning my fucking lines.

The flip side is that when I talk to other actors about it, it makes some sense to them that, for someone who is not highly adept at purely rote memorization (which I am not) this type of show would be extra challenging (which it has been and continues to be) since there is not real emotional arc to bind to your brain and therefore guide you through the scene.

The thing is, this is one instance where parsing out the “Why” makes me feel like a whining fool and still does not help me towards the task.

I do feel better today. But I still have a dread of walking back into that theater.

I have to let go of the idea that I can do this easily. Maybe this is another one of those life lesson thingies?

On a serious amazing coincidence note…as I finally got on the bus on the way to rehearsal last night, really feeling anxious, I was wrestling myself into a seat when I woman in front of me helped me out a bit and I looked up to se it was a woman I worked with back…oh, back when I was working for Leadership Public School. She worked for another non-profit on our floor. I had not seen her since before I left there to go to Burning Man and then to work my brief sojourn for Kink.

She’s lost quite a bit of weight and I almost did not recognize her. Being the totally sweet yet direct person she is, she asked “So, what have you been up to in your life in the year and a half since I saw you last?”

And god help her I told her. The bullet points ran something like this:

• Left LPS.
• Worked for kink.
• Fired 6 weeks later.
• Collected unemployment and drank myself into Hospital.
• Went to a month of detox / rehab.
• Got sober.
• Got a new job.
• Got rid of the drug-addicted roommate.
• The job was ill-suited, freaked me the fuck out and I left.
• Secured a new roommate.
• Went to the UK.
• Had another job offer.
• Denied that job.
• Worked in retail.
• Found a receptionist position.
• Met a nice Friend with whom I currently go on dates.
• Am rehearsing f or a show that opens in 3 days.

That is no unsmall list of changes to your entire life.

Then she mentioned that SHE too is sober these days…since … what did she say…July?

Wow. That was pretty amazing, frankly.

I gave her a flyer for the show and she said she will come to see it. I hope that she does!

Those that do not believe in gods, personal Jesii, or guardian spirits, skip over the rest.

So, the whole thing on the bus started that more positive whisper of :”You are ok, you are OK, we are all here to take care of you” that is kind of soothing but unnerving at the same time because, really, I am still very self-conscious about my spiritual life and I don’t like to talk about it. Which, for me, is a good reason to do just that.

Anyway, I got off of the bus and almost cried, from just being so worn out. But once again, like when I was sitting at my desk tripping, I realized I just do not have time to process in that manner. i.e., suck it up and get your ass into the theater.



I MUST REITERATE: every single person involved with the show has been NOTHING but supportive and wonderful and helpful and rooting for me the whole time. It feels like an embarrassment of kindness, and I still feel like I am missing the mark. But I also feel like, even with all of that help, I am chock full of Fail. SO, yeah, we are running the show and I get totally stuck on this one short fucking monologue that I just can’t fucking get! Mostly because it is a paragraph from something like a course description, and is so shittily written it is tough to grok.

But somehow, the night is finally rolling along.

For a tech, it is remarkably smooth. Eerily so. Aside from the costume designer, who, my Lord Ganesha help her, has lost her mind. Sleep deprivation is An Ugly Thing.

So, we are running tech, and the show across the hall has just had intermission. And there were several abandoned glasses of wine sitting out. And I had the strangest sensation…like, literally, my thought process and my emotional processes geared up, shut down, geared back up again and then broke into all-out war. As though you shut off the engine of a car going 68 MPH then, just as the engine was about to rip from the mounts, started it back up again…in reverse.

You know those 10 minute conversations that occur in a nanosecond? I had me seven of those. It was strange. That lovely old Bubbles…my Very Own alcoholic nasty Hyena person that I live with snapped awake in like a millisecond and it felt like I could feel the shove of that craving for annihilation in my guts. At the same time, even the smell of wine in the lobby was making my stomach turn, and I walked back down the hall to go for my next scene, I felt this totally calming moment when my own personal deity took it upon himself to settle the matter. The flash of suicidalness (which is the only way I can really explain what any desire to drink is like….it would feel like being suicidal, I think.) associated with that part of me that was all :”Just grab that half-empty bottle and drink it and you’ll hurt a lot less” was gone, and just gone. Being a very visual person, even in my own head, or especially so, I should say, it was like the hand of my Protector came down and he said “Really, enough is enough, now. Bubbles, it is OK, this is done now. Mollena, just finish the run and believe that you are doing the best that you can...you are alive.”

And so I trued that, and it seemed to work OK. The smell from the lobby still made my stomach upset though :-|

And so here I sit, another day, and I think I am ok. At least, this moment I feel that.
And I think I need to cut back on the caffeine. Seriously.

So the completely adorable Limey who sits right near me was kind enough to read THE MONOLOGUE FROM HELL INTO MY VOICEMAIL SO THAT i CAN LISTEN TO IT AND WHET MY ACCENT FOR THE SHOW.

wELL, HIS ACCENT IS NOT bRITISH sTANDARD, AS HE SOUNDS MORE nORTH lONDON, BUT THAT'S ok. i AM NOT FUSSY :-p

OK, fuck ME.

This is why it sucks that I cannot touch type. I get all into a paragraph only to discover that I have had the caps lock on.

Well, fuck it.

I am not retyping that shit.


Now I forgot what I was gonna say.

http://www.crowdedfire.org
WHEN: February 9-March 2, 2008
Preview: February 9, 2008
Open: February 11, 2008
Close: March 2, 2008
Run: Thursdays -- Sundays
Time: Sundays at 5pm, all other shows at 8pm.

WHERE: San Francisco Playhouse, Stage II
533 Sutter Street, SF

read more | digg story

I guess I should ask people to digg if they have a second so that...whatever happens when stuff is dugg...um..happens?

yeah...thanks?

(I dunno...eeek!)

Yeah, come see it.

**********************************************************************************************************************




Gone by Charles L. Mee
February 9 - March 2, 2008

the Gone ensemble
Shoresh Alaudini
Kalli Jonsson
Mollena Williams
Marilee Talkington*

*Member of AEA: an Equity Approved Contract

Tickets on sale now http://tix.theatrebayarea.org/ticketing/showdates.php?domain=BOOTH&s_id=248

A Lover pleas. An invalid anquishes. A blogger blogs. What does it all mean? A collage of the human experience, Charles Mee's Gone bears witness to fragments of people at their most tender, their most frightened, and their most poignant as they struggle to thrive against the clock, and time is gone.

Directed by Marissa Wolf, featuring ensemble members Mollena Williams (actor), Cliff Caruthers (sound), Jarrod Fischer (lights), and Alycia Dymond (stage management).

Mankind is under a magnifying glass in Gone. Charles L. Mee, who the New York Times' Jonathan Kalb says "has pulled off impressive feats of literary juggling" weaves a collage of text from the lost writings of Sophocles, excerpts from Proust, The NY Times Obituaries, and his own plays. Mr. Mee describes his plays as "broken, jagged, filled with sharp edges, filled with things that take sudden turns, careen into each other, smash up, veer off in sickening turns" also saying that he likes to put them "—with some sense of struggle remaining—into a classical form, a Greek form, or a beautiful dance theatre piece, or some other effort at civilization."

Gone thoughtfully exposes the most charged and the most mundane of the human experience in a poetic, visceral collage for the stage. Be it a recounted nightmare, a lover's plea, or a blogger's simple account of her day, the longings of life are achingly explored. As time slips by, characters grapple to communicate their deepest thoughts, love to the fullest, struggle to recreate a memory, and live life with significance before time is gone.


WHEN:
February 9-March 2, 2008
Preview: February 9, 2008
Open: February 11, 2008
Close: March 2, 2008
Run: Thursdays – Sundays
Time: Sundays at 5pm, all other shows at 8pm.


WHERE:
San Francisco Playhouse, Stage II
533 Sutter Street, SF