Perpetual anticipation’s a delicate art. Keeping control while falling apart… That lyric has been ricocheting around my brain the last few days as I deal with overlapping theatrical projects. The last few performances of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the one hand and auditioning, casting and prepping The Merry Wives of Windsor on the other. I think I have everything in order and on track but there’s this piece of me that feels there’s something major that’s been left out and all will come to disaster shortly because of it. I find I have to walk a very narrow line with myself. Keeping myself overly busy so that I stay engaged with the world and structured and don’t wallow versus piling so much on the plate that it shatters and I’m writhing around on the floor chasing after all of the bits and pieces that have rolled away and are now hiding under the bed with the dust bunnies.
The Chitty run has been successful. Good sales. Good reviews. A good time had by both audience and those of us on and surrounding the stage. I’m off to Vulgaria twice more, tonight and tomorrow matinee and then it will be put to bed, the latest in a very long line of stage productions that has kept me busy and only slightly mad over the last few decades. The mood is good and I’m enjoying myself (and whatever it was that was dragging my down a few weeks back seems to have been banished until it comes creeping back again). The on stage haircut trick has finally been perfected and now works far more than it doesn’t and I’ve had enough time to create covers for all possible variations of it going wrong so I’m ready no matter what happens. Live theater – there’s nothing like it. Something always goes wrong much to the amusement of cast and crew but the audience never knows unless the faux pas is incredibly major like a set collapse. Thursday night’s amusing moment was someone forgetting to set the tea cart with the Baron’s birthday cake. I have to make a very quick exit and reentrance with it and when it wasn’t there, I got to watch the stage manager make a mad dash across the deck to find it and race it to me so I was only about 10 seconds late getting it into place.
Merry Wives is just about to lift off. We have first read through on Tuesday. It’s a mix of old hands at Bell Tower Players, some folk who are alumni of my A Midsummer Night’s Dream from last year, and some people who are new to me. I still have a couple of cast vacancies but they aren’t difficult ones to fill. My job for the next six weeks is to turn those words (and there are a lot of them, even after making significant cuts) into a rollicking good time. If Midsummer was American Pie for the 1590s, Merry Wives is My Best Friends Wedding for the 1590s – smarter, more sophisticated and with a whole lot of subtext.
My publisher and I are conferring a lot on next steps for the writing career. White, a blank page or canvas… so many possibilities. Thoughts include turning the Accidental Plague Diaries into ebook and audiobook formats with additional commentary and updating. Doing a fourth book in the series that looks back and discusses lessons learned and what we can expect with the next pandemic (and there will be a next pandemic – they’re inevitable). Dramatizing parts of it into a performable monologue. Using APD as a backbone to delve deeper into the history of the pandemic and bringing others experiences, not just my own, into a better understanding of what the pandemic did to us as individuals and to our institutions – stuff that’s continuing to play out in all of our lives on a daily basis. If anyone has strong opinions on where they think things should go, feel free to spout off. I’ll be doing a fundraising reading for Central Alabama Theater on Saturday, July 27th for those who want to know more about all of this. More details forthcoming.
It’s been very wet today, driving the temperature down from the mid to high 90s to the low 80s which has been a nice reprieve. I went to an outdoor wedding yesterday (which was lovely) but the temperature was not. The programs were printed on fans and I felt like a Black church lady sitting there at Avondale amphitheater with sweat trickling down my brow trying to get any sort of motion in the air which felt like one of the far corners of the YMCA steam room. Thank god for white linen. I have a garden party this afternoon. The same suit is coming out but with a change of shirt and color scheme. I look good in a white linen suit but it does make me feel a bit like a small town Southern lawyer.
I checked the CDC for Covid numbers. They’re creeping back up again, especially in the South (people being forced inside together for air conditioning given the rather extreme heat we’ve had recently?). The recommendations remain the same. Exert common sense when around others, keep those hands washed, stay home when you’re sick, and get a Covid booster this fall when it should be fully updated against the most recent strains. There’s no indication yet of when fall boosters will be available, probably shortly after Labor Day. I leave the country on September 12th and I’m hoping I can get one before I go. The bird flu that’s been running through cattle farms is also still out there but there’s no evidence yet of significant human to human transmission. I’m keeping an eye on that one.
In terms of presidential politics, the less said the better. There’s no way to bring Politically Incorrect Cabaret back to deal with the nonsense as every few weeks, reality surpasses anything I could possibly make up. It takes about a month to write and rehearse a show like that. Anything I would lampoon today will be so far out of date in a month as to seem quaint and slightly antique.
Must close out now. Duties call…
Life, The Universe, and Everything 