This Is My Job

The year-end Great Lakes Theater Festival actor-teacher party was this evening. I am still a little woozy - it has been a very long week. Jumping back into Night Bloomers after our dizzying replacement weekend was disorienting enough. There's little pressure in jumping into a few surprise roles, but after one weekend, people expect you to be good at them.

It just never let up during that show. It was intense enough, just doing it. But when there's someone with Tourette's in the front row, or the moon hits a quadriplegic in the face, or a cast member bugs on you, or you have to put the moon on a stick, or (finally) you get a drop-dead case of some twenty-hour something that hits you with the shivers for your final two performances ... I just wanted to say, can I just do this fricking show once, without all the drama?

And then, still a little under the weather, we put together this evening's event, which was funny because I spent a good part of the afternoon fixing up the house, and then we didn't spend any time in it. Not complaining, it was beautiful outside, the whole crew just camped out front and never left.

It hasn't been since 2003 that all of the actor-teachers have been present for this wrap-up get-together. And that's been a shame. I have great affection for the people I work with every year, but I don't think it's a coincidence. The reason people have been missing generally reflected interests which are larger than the job itself, and sometimes that's hard to take. I almost went off on one of our company for wanting to attend a callback instead of come, but he was here, and apparently it's a conflict he was able to work around.

It's an intense job. These people go into unfamiliar schools every week, just two people with the lessons we have given them, and they strive to make young people appreciate classic drama. Sometimes the partnerships are strong, and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes the respect cuts across all the actor-teachers and sometimes it doesn't. I wish, regardless of how any one of them feels about the way others work in specific, the fact that they are out there, somewhere else on any given week, is understood and appreciated just for the very fact that they are out there doing it, too.

Does that make any sense at all?

It was a great, successful year. All four teams got so many great notices from the schools this year, it was truly amazing. We must be doing something right.