I had a great night....

...with two of my best ladies. We were at Molly's comfortable cozy nest with a fire in the fire place....an aside....brilliantly LOVE that there are APARTMENTS to be found in our area with WORKING fireplaces. We laughed until our faces hurt and so hard that...TMI (didn't but couda....y'all have been there).

We talked about so much...about work, about Frankie Tux PI...that was an in the moment thing that can't be translated but makes laugh after the fact...about the news, about everything.

About relationships.

Molly and I want to smack our friend John really hard upside the head to look at Toni. They would make a photo op couple but beyond that...they have so much in common. He doesn't see it because he is stuck on an ethereal looking woman who is socially inept and an intellectual snob. His comment about why it doesn't work is that they could never walk down the street and hold hands...just the rhythm never got in sync.

My Mum turns 80 in a few days. It shocked me. That means my Dad will be 86 in April. I think of them as invincible somehow. I think my Dad sees himself that way...I know he does on the golf course. It has so pissed him off in past months he has scored above his age. This has only been a recent occurrence but Jimmy ain't a happy man.

I have meandered...I have no closing...yes, I do. Tonight made think about relationships and how important they are. How important it is to make connections. I often wonder when I put a belt around someone if that is the only time that day that someone has a physical contact with them?

I'm a person big on hugging and kissing. My husband sometimes not so much. I tell him "Think of all the times when you wanted to have someone to kiss and hug and there was one there...well, I'm here". He gets it...it's good to make him think.

Things I have embraced today:
1. It is okay to go from you jammies to a bubble bath to your robe without any other major activity in your day. That was pretty much my day guilty and then...
2. Parked my butt in my robe on the Ikea chair enwrapped with the snuggy thing with arms (AS SEEN ON TV)...fell asleep to the hideous behaviours of thye women on "Bridezillas"
3. Bob kissed me and told me go have a good time with my girls. So I did.

I think today was everything I wished and didn't even know til looking back.

How true is that.

Triggers to your memory....

...can be so random. I just read an entry from a fellow blogger. She talked about the Vietnam Memorial and her visit there. It made me remember the feelings that I had when I was fortunate enough to be cast in the play "A Piece of My Heart". The plays deals with the Vietnam War from the womens perspective...the characters were nurses, USO dollies, a career Army officer and a USO entertainer (Mary Jo Kincaid from Texas...who I played). The play followed their experiences through the war and the turmoil of the years after.

I had grown up with the war as part of my landscape...it was on the nightly news every evening and it was...well...just there. When you're a kid you don't really understand that something you hear about everyday can be a horrible, devastating reality. If you hear about enough...it becomes a drone...background music.

My sister was of the age that friends from high school would have been drafted. I don't remember that any of her friends were but I was still in the childhood bubble. When I got to high school, the draft was done, the rumblings to get out were mighty, and US involvement was limping to an end. The situation never quite had hit home.

Flash forward 25+ years and I am cast in this show with a brilliant group of actresses...some of whom I had worked with and some not. We start into rehearsals and the rumblings about sending soldiers to Iraq has begun. Betsey's Dad had been in Nam and everything became intensely personal for her. We talked about the protesters holding candlelight vigils in the green on the way to rehearsals (and this is not a community that would have seemed to do such things) and just the trepidation...the fear.

The play was taken from interviews of women who had lived this...we had a responsabilty to these people. Each night at rehearsal, we immersed ourselves into these womens lives...their pain and their hope and their memories. We bonded into such a tight unit. We were all scared about what could happen if we went to war...yet it seemed so surreal to be doing a play about an unwanted war while facing the prospect of another.

The final scene of the play takes place at the Wall. The first time that we did the scene in performance...I GOT it. I understood somehow what it meant. I can't explain it better than that...I just somehow understood what it meant...how it changed the people who were in country forever and how those changes paid forward in so many ways. I can't even fathom what is for someone to actually be there at the wall and touch a name.

Thank you to my fellow blogger for being inspiring and reminding me.

Auditions...

...have been posted by the local theater companies. I have ignored them until recently. I miss acting. I miss the process...and I never thought I had a process but in coaching John...apparently I do.

In coaching John for "Inherit the Wind" it made me realize how I work as an actor. I have never really understood my process...that's not true. I work from the inside out. There has to be something in that character I recognize in myself....something I have to say. I wasn't trying to push that on John...he is always a man of questions...just wanting to help him embrace his virgin acting experience and know that it does MEAN something. You are making a connection. It matters.

I did "The Heidi Chronicles" years ago (played Heidi) and remember driving to the theater on opening night and just beginning to cry uncontroulibly My husband at the tine was cool about it ...knew me so well...it was what I needed. When we got to the theater, another of the actresses was on the floor in the bathroom with an icepack her nose...she got stress nosebleeds. Yes, we do suffer for art.

I am lucky to have done parts that have changed my life...have changed me. I found these women I played at the time I needed to play them. The parts I played have pushed me forward...helped me grow.

There is an audition coming up for "Streetcar Named Desire"...I know I'm too old and not pretty enough...but I KNOW Blanche. I had auditioned for the role once before...wasn't cast and it was a blessing. Could not have emotionally handled it.

I just want to audition...to prove to myself I still have my chops...still have my
nerve (I hate auditions)...

Still have something to say and willing to make my self heard

Haven't been here in a while...

...and have just read what I wrote in November. It is now January of 2010 and I feel so out of the loop about so much.

First off, I couldn't figure out why there was all this stuff about the decade...the past decade this...past decade that...until I finally noticed...2010...new decade. Time has just been swirling like the flush of a toilet. You just do what you do and then it's gone....swooosh.

I have been feeling depressed. I think that I need to make an appointment with my doctor and have little better living through chemistry. Don't know what has set this little bout off and wish I did. I keep thinking if I could only figure out that thing....

...but I do know what that thing is. I haven't felt creative in so long. I was so proud of Bob when he was doing "Inherit the Wind" and glad that I could help with costumes and so enjoyed coaching John...but I miss having my own voice. I can feel that tug at my soul...that need to express something...the need to communicate...to be heard. I feel like I have become a shadow of me...so many parts of me I am not engaging.

I remember years ago I did a show and one of the other cast members said to me "You have no idea of the power that you have." I remember just looking at her, gobsmacked. I don't think of me as powerful but that's because I am afraid of so many things. I learned at an early age that acting what you felt or not doing what others wanted led to humiliation and ridicule...best to avoid conflict. There was a moment many years back that I felt like I was coming into my self...that was the strongest I have ever felt in my life.

It bothers me more than I let him know that my husband does not want me to talk about work. I work retail...I work with women...there are problems and he's fix it kind of guy and I DO understand why he doesn't want to hear it...but I still need to talk about it. I know I get boring. When I blab about work, I'm trying to make my self heard.

I think that's it...I am feeling like I am not being heard.