Tuesday and decisions

The show was fun, in the end (Maggie Lee Showcase at the Pocket Theatre, part of Fringe Month.)  Not much of a house, at least as many performers as paying audience members, but I enjoyed watching everyone else.  I think there were four short plays and seven monologues, broken up into three sets.  I was in the last group.  Was so nervous before I had to go up, thought I'd forget everything, rush through, skip lines, freeze, shake, etc., but in the end, though I think I said a couple of wrong words ("fall" instead of "drop," etc.), it went alright.  People laughed a lot, it was probably the lightest of the monologues.  I think I'll keep it for auditioning, but I'd really like to work on it with a director.  I had toyed with the idea of looking at different audience members, but then nixed that after feedback from my scene class, but as it turned out, couldn't see anyway (because of the lights), so hopefully didn't let my eyes wander too much, an ongoing issue, though it's getting better.

The Chekhov scene is difficult, it's the opening scene of "The Cherry Orchard."  Why I say that is because the section we have, doesn't seem to have a "turn" in it (i.e., the characters do not change from the beginning to the end); and also, they aren't listening to each other, for the most part, they are just talking.  Will need to bring a strong action.  There is, however, plenty of humor in it, and the Lopakhin speech is loaded, pretty much sets up all the class changes of the era: the end of the gentry, and a rising up of a middle class.  I think of an innate desire to more than survive that drives people to do what it takes to thrive (or at least not go backward); you see this a lot in Jane Austen's stories (among others) and we tend to view those women as villains, but in the situation they've found themselves, they are working with what they have to get ahead (marriage), i.e, Lucy Steele, Isabella Thorpe, etc.  I see that in Dunyasha, and later in the play she bemoans that she can't go back to being a servant (she is a servant, and of the servant class, but has been pretending to be gentry, and getting away with it), and she has an offer of marriage, but it's less than what she wants, not who she wants, though she is keeping it as an option.  (Society is the villain; perhaps if social structure and laws governing rights were different, these women would still be villains, but they get a pass, from me.  Dickens, writing later, has real individual villains: the abusive headmasters, the Murdstones, Uriah Heep, etc., in addition to society playing that role.)

Have to decide if I'm gonna continue on in this group.  I'd like to, I find it immensely helpful: to be working on scenes, to get feedback, to be able to practice monologues for people, etc...just have to figure out the money situation, where I can cut expenses elsewhere.  I probably can, but it's pretty tight.  It's priority, right?  If I keep making the same choices, day after day, nothing will change, at least not something that I have agency in, toward my own good, my own future.  Outside, things I have little control over are constantly changing, but I'd like to act, and not just constantly wipe myself out by jumping here and there to react to changing circumstances, and never proceed in the general direction of where I say I want to end up.  Even if it's a little bit of progress, to move forward, and to see the destination ahead.

And I'm still trying to decide how I can take a vacation, in my head, sometimes I've already left.  It'll have been 5 years, but I still feel like a privileged ass sometimes for mentioning it, and yet, I can also feel myself festering for lack of travel.  I'll make it happen.

Back to earth, three hours into the workday, I realized I was wearing my shirt, backward, and inside-out.  It's fixed now.

And my friend is leaving town, moving to Philly, too expensive to be here.  Saw him last Friday for the last time, though, it's true we'd fallen out of touch, and so I appreciate his effort to say goodbye.  One friend I could talk about almost anything with (our conversations went everywhere, has been that way since we met, 17 years ago he reminded me, how is that possible?) and always feel safe there, could always be myself.  I find that's not the standard acceptable behavior.  He's spoiled me to everyone else.