Celebration

I am supposed to be off-book my next Tuesday. This was an arbitrary date arrived at Monday night when it was decided that rehearsal would proceed even though my director needs to be absent. Kelly and I will read lines, I must be off-book. This worried me ... until the past two nights when I discovered exactly how valuable to human mind is and how much can be retained through sheer repetition. So much, locked up there, waiting to re-emerge.

Ali has cut my tethers. So much of the original I HATE THIS was static. Sitting. Telling stories. Until I suddenly leap into action, bolting around the hospital bed in order to hit the intercom, movement is pretty slow and measured. These things will change. Working in Fefu's Kitchen, a tiny room but pretty much the dimensions of the stage in the Storefront, I am encouraged to address everyone, on all four sides, in close. This is new. Turning around, putting my back to the corners, using the entire space. We have been playing, I have been speaking low -- so as not to interrupt performances of DARWINII, but also because I am reserving strength, I am very tired from work, and am aware of how much energy the ATYD rehearsals will take out of me.

Bounce on your toes for three hours. It's a little trying.

We play with gestures, those I was aping for ATYD, get folded back into IHT. Reflection. Memory.

My family is making plans for Sunday. Calvin would be ten. Calvin is ten. How do you fill a decade? With words, to be sure. The girl is looking forward to visiting the zoo. The boy ... has been invited to someone else's birthday party. How do you tell a five year-old he can't go to a birthday party for his schoolmate so you can commemorate a dead sibling? That's easy -- you don't. You take him there. You make it work. It's all a celebration.