Until we meet again.

See ya! I'm going home. Love and happy trails to one and all. I will sit in my backyard and eat cheese and drink wine. I will remember. I will look forward. New challenges await for us all. Let us then be full of joy to have been part of something so magical and perfect. Let us all seek for that again. Life is, after all, about the journey. We will travel part of it again together some day. I know it. We are part of the smallest community and we are all one and the same. No tears, just a "until we meet again."

xo

The Last Long Look.

Hot tonight. Another closing party going on upstairs. I attended briefly, but they have a cat, and I'm just too allergic.

I say goodbye only to people I don't expect to see again. I don't say goodbye to theatre people. I know I will see them again. We are just too small a community. We like each other (mostly) too much. Some of us actually live fairly close to each other... elsewhere.

One last show. One final Cyrano... then mad packing (and by definition) unpacking, later. One last closing party. One kiss to the wind. One last long look backward.

And now the future. Looking forward. Wondering and full of hope and looking forward.

The Most Boring Blog Ever.

My cast is wandering around looking for a party. Not at my apartment thank-you. We do still have 2 more shows. It ain't over yet!

I'm trying to eat up the food in my apartment rather than buy more food, and the food I have has all become so unappealing. I keep thinking about vacuuming, then I think, why bother? The cleaning crew will be in to shampoo the carpets on Monday, after I leave. I will do laundry tomorrow, so I can have clean clothes to take home. I will clean the bathroom, because I don't want the cleaning crew thinking evil things about me. Oh, hell, I'll vacuum too.

Oh Gosh! This is the most boring blog ever! Next I'm going to be talking about the oven, and maybe how I should stick my head in it! "Jeez-Oh-Man! Who Really Cares?" she asks herself, and then laughs a secret laugh.

I must retrieve my shattered eloquence.

{Time Passes}

My director just dropped by, looking for a party. Sure hope there is one!

{Time Passes}

Am I mute? Do I really have nothing to share? I have a million thoughts running around naked, but I can't put them into any semblance of a sentence.

It just took me 10 minutes to figure out how to spell "semblance."

Do I get stupid as shows end? Or just lazy? It is true that all I really want to do (is talk to you) no, all I really want to do is lie on the couch and watch mindless television.

Boring, see! I warned you!

{Time Passes!}

I have a dummy in my apartment. Really... a life sized child puppet thing. Too complicated to explain. (Though, that might be a more interesting story...) It is going to freak me out in the middle of the night, I just know it.

{Time Passes}

I'm gonna go wander around and look for a party.

{Time Passes and I'm still here.}

Yikes. It is a really good thing I am going home. CLEARLY, it is time.

(The dummy, just now, completely turned me around and scared me, oh! and where did I put down the vodka?)

Endings.

My performance report tonight (edited only to exclude actor/designer names):

"We had a wild and wonderful performance this evening. Sir Andrew made me laugh, out loud, throughout the show, on headset, calling cues. It felt a little like a Marx Brothers Film. (In a good way.) Orsino's Guy #4 got a gasp and a little applause for his flip off the bridge.

We started off with a music rehearsal when it was warm with a chance of bugs.

By the end of the evening we had major fog rolling in from the ocean clouding Act 5. (The lighting designer) would have loved this, his light shafts were all clearly visible. The fog also meant the planes took off over our stage instead of over the ocean, so a lot of air traffic noise this evening.

Standing Ovation."

Did I mention we perform on an outdoor stage? See what fun this is? See why I am torn about leaving? One of each show left. 3 total and we are done. Endings. I know there is something new already beginning, but right now, sitting in an apartment that will belong to someone else in 4.5 days, I can see only endings.

I'm Off!

I can't find my glasses, I've lost my jump drive, I need to take a shower and clean this apartment, so of course, instead, I'm wasting time, writing my blog.

My feelings have been so ambivalent lately, I have not felt much like writing. I am longing to be home. I am loathe to say goodbye. I am tired, and I have boundless energy. I look at the books I didn't read this summer, the gift certificate to a massage I probably won't use, the sorting and packing I've left to the last minute and wonder where the time went.

The dichotomy is 6 months is a really long time. 6 months is no time at all, and flew by. However, I'm more ready to go than I don't feel like leaving. Convoluted and flawed sentence construction, but indicative of my inner thoughts and feelings.

I know what to do, right now. I am getting up, getting into the shower. I will take out the garbage. I will make the bed and meet my boss for lunch. I will go have coffee later this afternoon with my director. I will nap and I will call a show. A full day.

I'm off.

Talk Like A Pirate!

Poetry, Art, and Silliness all have clear and stable places in my consciousness. Today is "International Talk Like a Pirate Day." Really! Argh, and avast ye maties. (That is the extent of my pirate talk. I'm sure I'll hear more tomorrow. The little kids know about it. Keith Olbermann knows about it. Many of my company members do too.) Weird little "holiday" made possible by the internet, no doubt. Love it. Love the complete randomness of it and how utterly silly it is.

These communal efforts to play bring joy to our lives. I just joined "Mafia Wars" on facebook. Never thought I would, but my beautiful nephew invited me and I just don't know how to say "no" to him. Apparently I'm still playing "Vampires" because someone attacked me and I lost. There exists a whole other universe, a virtual place, I know very little about. I stand at the edge of a galaxy in this new, utterly strange arena and wonder at the inventive nature of our species. We PLAY. We want to PLAY. One of my sisters and I, when very young, used to spell it out so the younger sister wouldn't know where we were disappearing to. We'd say "wanna P. L. A. Y.?" then we'd hold up our hands and make the "OK" symbol. A little mean, but she was two and didn't really care to be away from Mom and the new baby.

We grow up and we still want to play. We play golf. (Well, not me.) We play tennis. We play badminton or volleyball. I don't really need to go through all the sports... we play scrabble and other board games. (My other nephew would say "bored" games. He plays video games.) We play cards and word games and horseshoes. We play in the pool. We play with our pets and our children. We play piano and guitar. We play with ourselves and each other. (Sorry, had to say it.) We go to plays. We do plays. We are players, all.

Playing is part and parcel of who we are. We are frantic to play.

I think this is good. I think playing keeps us on the road to happiness. We take pleasure in a group game or activity. We relax, or compete, or watch and enjoy. We grow and learn through playing, just like children or lion cubs.

Playtime. Okay, sometimes I prefer "nap time" but only because I have such interesting and entertaining dreams. I wake up refreshed, ready to go do my play. Tonight is Cyrano. What a gift. My work is a Play!

(I do appreciate the fact that much of this blog is a play on words. See how many ways we can play? Astounding.)

Okay. So today. PLAY! Talk like a Pirate. (Lights 204 Go, Argh!)

When We Are Lucky.

My Cast is a little melancholy. The end is near. 10 days left. 9 shows. Some of us were chatting after Coriolanus tonight about what a great company, and what great company we've been. No drama, except on the stage. We all like each other. We work and play well together. We'll miss this.

And this too shall pass. All things do. Even the good things. So, we'll say goodbye and look to the next challenge. In the meantime, we will enjoy what we've created together and hope to work together again one day. Bittersweet. (I still miss people from my first Rep, four years ago.)

I am hoping I will find the time and interest to continue my blog when I return home. This blog has been a great outlet for me, exploring the random nature of my thoughts, recording them and rereading what those days held for me. It is all so ephemeral. Like Time. Like a dream I once had.

It is like a dream. In this case, a really really good dream. I will feel that way when I've unloaded my car of 6 months worth of memories and clothes. It will feel like I am returning from a long sleep. I am ready. I am ready to return to my life, my love, my home.

When I did Angels on Broadway, I remember thinking "I am so glad I am doing this. I am so very happy on Broadway. The community is fantastic, the experience truly awesome." But... I hated living in that city. I felt trapped. I couldn't see enough sky, or enough forest. The streets smelled funny and funky. (Central Park is not a forest. It is a park, albeit a very large park. The East River is not the Pacific, hell, it is not even an ocean!) I am very much a California Girl. I wished the year away, wanting to remember living it, instead of actually living it. (I mean, I did live it, I just was unhappy and alone.)

I am alone a lot here too. But somehow it is okay. The sun, my quest for the sea, the proximity to home make San Diego a better fit for me. I know every theatre professional wants to do Broadway. I've done it. Okay? I've done Broadway 3 times. And I've done Radio City too. I've done NY. I just want to visit now. Or get paid a lot of money to come work on a great project for a couple of months. About the length of my tolerance for NYC.

London was a bit better. It felt like a cleaner New York. Honestly, LA does not feel like a city. (We live in a suburb. LA is a collection of suburbs.) San Francisco is my favorite city. Beautiful and small. Clean and perfect. San Diego is a bigger city than one might expect. It feels larger than San Francisco, I don't actually know... it just feels bigger. San Diego would be perfect, except for the politics of the place. Maybe I just prefer the space I'm afforded in Los Angeles. City folk have no concept of space. I have room in LA. I have a room in San Diego. And, my San Diego apartment is about 3 times the size of my NY apartment, which was larger than my flat in London. (If I opened the bed I couldn't open the front door. I had to leave the bathroom door open at night because of the same problem. I had to back in to the bathroom because it was so narrow. Okay, I was heavier, then. Leave me alone!) The point? Different concepts of space.

So, what am I really talking about here? Space and Time. I knew it! I should have been a theoretical physicist or a mathematician. (I was once a Math Major. hmm.)

I will live in Los Angeles because it is what makes me happy, and, like most people in my profession, I will travel for work. We are all peripatetic, we are all gypsies. It is the nature of the business. It has to be okay. I will return and live at home when I can, and work where work calls to me or needs me.

Life is and has to be good; it is what we make it so. And (for my best friend), "Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life."

We travel; we travel through time and space. When we are lucky, we travel through time and space together.