Tech Week with Benefits

Nothing quite makes the tech week experience complete like getting your period, getting an almost migraine, and getting the flu. Combine that with half of the female cast and crew also getting their periods and the emotional tension of tech week being upped significantly by that and then the fact that I’ve spread the flu around as an early Christmas present, and you have the recipe for a smash success on your hands.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, tech week for “The Way of the Wolf” is in full swing, which for this particular show means that we have one more two-hour rehearsal, another run of the show with a preview audience and a notes session and then we open. It’s actually not that bad except for the added bonuses mentioned above. This show is a lot of firsts for me – my first student show without production elements (yeay!), my first show with idiotically fast costume changes (gah), my first time singing solo in a show (which I like), the first time doing rehearsal with the flu (which I didn’t like), my first experience doing fight work (cool), and my first time of getting my period at intermission during a rehearsal run (not so cool). Also, I’ve never played a raccoon or a nighthawk before. It does seem like every show I’m in my character has either a near-death or full-death experience, so the fact that the raccoon dies isn’t that new to me…but getting shot and falling off the mezzanine is a new, cool thing I’ve never done before.

I’m probably so chipper about the whole thing because I’m actually pretty much over the flu, and getting my period doesn’t really phase me that much – and the almost migraine is a thing of the past. I’ve opened shows before, and I’m not worried about this one. We’re ready. Whether everyone else in the cast feels that way is open to question, but I know that we are and if there are some opening week hiccups, I’ve had those too. They come, they go and the show goes on.

Having the flu was actually not that bad of an experience this time. I never did throw up, and being achy and feverish wasn’t so bad with S. there to make me tea and watch movies with me, and shower me with concern and tenderness. My mother will be happy – every time I get sick she wants to come and baby me until I’m better, so the fact that somebody else did will be music to her ears. All the TLC may have actually gotten S. sick, in which case I intend to reciprocate the attention and make him tea and tend to his every need – where my schedule allows. I got sick on a weekend, so that made things a little easier. I suppose I could always get my mom to come down and take care of him.

There is an old superstition that bad things come in threes. I just realized that I got all of my opening night bad luck out of my system already. If that isn’t a good omen, I don’t know what is.

Benefits, indeed.

Learning

It has happened.

My boyfriend and his ex have been paired up in class to perform a scene together.

I'm glad I thought about this possibility before I agreed to date him - but even with that, it has presented challenges that I don't know what to do with.

The scene? It's from "The Taming of the Shrew", with S. playing Petruchio and M. playing Kate. Petruchio is wooing Kate to be his wife, and Kate is resisting his every move. It's a pretty physical scene - at one point S. sits M. down on a chair and straddles her.

The strange thing is, watching them perform doesn't bother me. Knowing that they are rehearsing doesn't bother me. No. What bothers me is seeing the slight hesitation in M.'s body, the tension she obviously feels when they touch. It bothers me that as soon as they finish the scene, M. looks to me to see if I'm okay, if I still like her, if I'm having a hard time watching her be physical with my boyfriend. She is so insecure in this work that it is rubbing off on me and I hate that.

I just wish she could relax and be professional about it. S. is being professional. That tension doesn't read in his body. As soon as the pairings were announced, we talked about it and we both recognize that we have to be professional about it. There isn't any other option in our minds. But M. is having such a hard time doing that, and it both irritates me and makes me mistrust her around S. A part of me wonders if she is having such a hard time letting work be work because she still wants to be with him.

And because she talks to me about everything, I know that she still has feelings for him. She told me when we started dating that she didn't, but since then I've learned that was a lie. She is still going through the whole grieving, ending a relationship process and dammit, as much as I want to trust her, it is very hard.

It's a very good thing that I trust S. or this would all be so much worse. I know that nothing will happen - I'm not feeling jealousy - but there is this horrible unease that I don't know what to do with. And the thing is, I know the unease is valid. It's grounded in her insecurity and the fact that she hasn't found closure yet - and at the same time, I know that S. has. So what am I supposed to do with this? I trust him, I don't completely trust her. I know nothing will happen, and I'm uneasy. I am trying my best to be professional about this, and she keeps looking to me for reassurance - and it pisses me off and I don't know how to respond.

I guess it's just another glorious learning experience. I'm getting tired of learning. It takes a lot of work and sometimes I just don't want to have to deal with another new thing, figuring out how to be healthy and whole in a new situation. And I am not content to be stagnant, so my own will pushes me to take these learning experiences and use them.

Dammit anyways.

Hair, hair, look at that hair

All I can say is that it is a good thing I'm not Sampson.

Before I go further, I need to say that my hair is very long. It reaches half-way down my back in waves of a reddish-brown. In fact, it is too long. I can no longer really do anything with it. If I put it up it gives me headaches, and if I leave it down it gets everywhere - in my mouth, my eyes, tangled in my glasses or my buttons on my shirts. However, it has always been long and that is how I am used to interacting with it.

Well, as of next Thursday, it will be short. It is getting cut for a show - being in theatre means I can no longer control my hair. This is something that I have mentally prepared myself for ever since I decided to follow this crazy passion of mine. However, it will be short! The longest parts will be at the top of my shoulders, and the shortest bits will be by the tops of my ears, I think. I haven't had short hair for a very long time. In fact, I don't know what to do with short hair. I am going to have to spend a day learning how to do my hair all over again.

I'm a little uncertain as to what I think about this. I am tired of how long it is. I think the new cut will look cute, and I think I'll like it. But so much hair is going! It will be an adjustment, and every so often I freak out a little inside about it.

But, as my mother says, hair grows. It will grow back if I absolutely hate it. It will grow back if I absolutely love it - either way, this is not a permanent state.

Just a very new one.

I just have to remind myself that I won't lose all my strength when my hair lands on the floor.

Jericho

"How can a person go from liking a person to not wanting to have anything to do with them in less than three hours?" I asked one of my friends the other day. He shrugged. I wonder what his response would be to my new question - how can I explain going from not liking M. to being able to say that I love her in less than three hours?

I don't know that something like that can be explained in any other way than to say "It's a God thing." That's all it is - I certainly didn't find some hidden store of love that I chose to shower upon M. It was like God reached down and gave me a bunch of extra love and that spilled over onto her and it's sticking like toffee to carpet, only in a much better way than that.

And all because I didn't let up on her about her dishes, and then one of my housemates told her that she was only in the house on a probationary measure, and so she snapped and her walls came down. It amazes me how being able to see someone in their vulnerability and weakness makes them so much more human, lovable, understandable...I am able to see her as a person now, and I can extend grace and mercy towards her in a way that I strove for before but failed at miserably.

I learned a lot last night - about M., about me, about living together with my boyfriend's ex and what that means for both M. and myself...and about the attitudes my housemates and I have been carrying in our auras, for lack of a better way to describe it. We really have been unmerciful and judgemental, and M. has been picking up on that so clearly, so much more clearly than I realized.

It is so hard. It is so bizarre - all I can do is shake my head and laugh. God has such a strange sense of humour sometimes. I am her ex's new girlfriend, and somehow I've ended up one of her closest friends right now. I am the one in our house with the most reasons to hate her, and I am the one in our house who has suddenly found myself in a place (God given, granted) to love her the most. And I have the most reason to close myself off to her, and I have had my eyes opened to see the negative attitudes of the rest of my housemates. And I don't know what to do about that.

I don't want to take up M.'s cause against my friends, and at the same time I see that they really aren't giving her much of a chance - and that is their prerogative.

So what do I do? I have prayed to be able to love M., and now I have been given that ability and I want to share it with the rest of my housemates but I can't, and it isn't my place to anyway. It's something that God can show them - if they want to be shown.

And I want them to want that so badly, and there isn't a single thing I can do about it.

Unless I march around them for a week, blowing on a ram's horn...that worked for Joshua.

It could be worth a try, at least.