Chicago, Illinois October 12 - 13, 2006
An extremely moving, exhilarating and difficult weekend, and not for the reasons you would expect. I don't even know where to begin, and whether or not I can cover everything. However, if I were to make a laundry list of subjects I would like to cover - in no particular order - they would include:
• General Props
• Would you like bread with that?
• Bereaved Father, Superstar
• Author, Author
• FAQ
• Boy, does this hotel suck
• Migraines & Prison Pillows
• Brick
• The Castro Sisters
And I am sure there will be others to come ...
• General Props
The conference began on Thursday, but we could not get away until Friday. There were seminars we wanted to attend on Friday afternoon, and made a concentrated effort to arrive by noon. We aimed for a 5am departure time, and I was impressed we actually left by 6, but even with an extra hour afforded us by a time change we actually forgot until we were halfway there, you just can't make a car trip with two small children without tacking on two extra hours - and then there's the Dan Ryan Expressway.
So we actually got there around two, and still had to unpack and eat. At the very least Toni hoped to get to the keynote address she thought was at five - but was actually at three-thirty. Luckily we ran into Kathie Kobler just as we got back from sushi and soba noodles in the Merchandise Mart Food Court. Kathie was the conference chair, and delightfully helpful. She told us the address was beginning right then, at 3:30 - and I waved off Toni and took the kids with me back up to the room.
Kathie K. and the entire planning committee did a dynamite job. We thought the entire weekend was well organized, and there was a very positive atmopshere throughout.
So, as I said, I went up to the room with Z. & O. And just like the fun-filled dad I am, I asked if they wouldn't help me schlep my set down to the performance space. We were quite a picture, me lifting a cardboard box with props in it, a small table, stool and stepladder, while a three year-old and one year-old dutifully followed after - into the elevator from the 23rd to the 15th floor, across the lobby, and down a different elevator. They were also super-gracious when we found the cookies I promised on the 14th floor had already been taken away.
There I met Todd Hochberg in person, another of the planning committee, and the man responsible for, among so many other things, all the technical aspects of my show. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Todd. There was a gimungous screen off to one side, and I had a platform so people in the back could see. It was to be held in the Sauganash East Ballroom and so I needed to be mic'ed (well, I didn't need to be, but it helped) and though there were a number of technical difficulties, which I may or may not go into later, Todd was instrumental in surmounting them.
Also, I wanted to mention Alana Roush, a founding member of the Pregnancy Loss and Infant Death Alliance (PLIDA) who introduced the performance. Apparently she found me by Googling "plays about dead babies" or something to that effect - and whoa, amazing, she found my website. "Isn't the internet incredible?" she said.
There are others I want to acknowledge, and I will hopefully get to them by and by.
• Boy, does this hotel suck.
You know, when Toni and the rest of us visited last spring to check out a school for her, the difference between the hotel we stayed in this weekend, the Holdiay Inn Chicago - Mart Plaza and the Holiday Inn we chose to stay in a few blocks away, was only ten bucks. That place was ten dollars more expensive a night than the Mart Plaza, and it's amazing how much more ten dollars will get you.
We waited out front for a long while before a valet parking attendant showed up.
The concierge was rude, unhelpful, and really didn't know where anything was.
They had one hapless waiter in the hotel restaurant on Friday night - I had a show to do, and it took an hour to get our dinner. I would have just left, but Kelly, my stage manager, was enduring a terrible cold, and I needed her to sit and eat. By the time we got back to the performance space, I discovered that whatever the hotel liason had done to the sound, it was hideous and we had fifteen minutes to get it right. Todd H., again, had my back.
Breakfast the next moning (which I missed, for reasons I will explain) almost gave Toni a nervous breakdown.
The iron in our room didn't work. Must I go on?
The view from our room, however, was stunning. It's like we were on a 23 story high boat in the middle of the Chicago River, facing the El, the Sears Tower, everything. Almost worth it.
• Migraines & Prison Pillows
The accumulated stress of four hours of sleep, on the road for eight hours, the dinner fiasco and pre-performance stress, coupled with an unfamiliar bed, the general dehydration that you get in any hotel room, and my pillow led to a horrorshow of a migraine.
Let me explain the pillow. I prefer a flat, usually very old pillow (that's the only way they get so flat.) Toni calls them my prison pillows. I can't sleep without a pillow, and a sheet of paper is a little too thin, but any real thickness at all and I am terrible uncomfortable. And I will get a headache.
So we already missed Thursday and Friday's events (well, I did - Toni got to see one adress and everyone got to see me, but I didn't) and then I missed three blocks Saturday morning because I was immovable and weeping in my hotel bed. I did take my meds before dawn, and again several hours later, and they just weren't going to take. I needed to ride this one out. I was able to join Toni for lunch ... and more on that later.
This is the bad stuff. After this it all gets good ... except for Toni getting food poisoning at Ed Debevic's. I will post more tomorrow, I promise.
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