Click on for larger image.Today's performance at the Ohio AWHONN Conference was exceptional for a number of reasons, all of them cause for celebration.
First off, it was just a really good experience. There was no time to hold a Q&A afterwards, so Kelly and I just hung out around the food, ate fruit cocktail and an awful lot of nurses came up to me to talk. I was only planning to stay maybe a half hour before we hit the road for home, but too many people wanted to talk, and that was really great.
My contact, Jennifer D. was remarkably helpful in getting everything set up, making sure the rocking chair arrived, etc. I owe her a lot for bringing the show there, and talking it up so well prior to our arrival.
The real
Nurse Angel, Carrie C. was in attendance - this was the first time she would ever see the show. This made me even more nervous than usual, the idea of performing her in front of her (that usually does) but I was a little distracted by the fact that I had to use a lav mic, and so while I was moving around the "hospital room," check the pulse on her wrist (though nurses don't need to do that anymore) or manually pumping the bloo dpressure guage (though nurses don't need to do that anymore) I was also swinging a mic cable over and around the stoll in the middle of the performance space. Considering this was done without practicing it once, it wasn't a problem, nor something I worried too much about.
One major change in this performance was my dropping of all offensive language (unless you count one use of the word "suck" as offensive.) Before all of my champions start crying foul, I have to explain. I always thought the swear words appropriate, and most who have walked this walk agree. And four-letter words and blaspehmies are entirely acceptable at fringe festivals and to those who perform midwifery, it would seem. But after my last experience in front of an audience made up entirely of nurses ... I mean it was hot that afternoon anyway, and the air conditioning was on the fritz, but the moment I let fly with the c-bomb, I could feel the crowd get chilly.
Colorful language had been removed from the radio drama, for obvious reasons. And when I performed in London, I was in a church hall, and chose to respect the space and also altered the langauge accordingly. But I had already decided to just keep it that way even before Jennifer gently requested that I take it easy on the effers. I got so many negative remarks from that event based soley on the talk, I just don't want it to be an issue anymore.
Once we checked into the hotel last night, Kelly and I went out with Julie - the real Julie, my girlfriend from college who figures so heavily in the performance. Unfortuntely, she was not able to attend today, though she did listen to the radio version the day before. She thought it was very odd hearing someone reading her own thoughts ... but I think it would have been weirder to watch me. At least Magdalyn didn't perform her with a speech impediment.
It was beautiful catching up with Julie, we went to this wine & tapas place after walking some fifteen blocks from where we parked - great walk, great wine, great talk.
And I am very glad to be home.
During my all-too-brief residency in Los Angeles, I learned two things. Yes, only two things. 1) The value of dark coffee and 2) bananas are high in potassium, which is a natural anxiety reliever. What I was too stupid to realize was that the two cancel each other out, but stupidity was the order of the day when I lived in L.A., so there you go.
