Butterfly: Road to One Act Festival, Part 2

Tomorrow is our tech rehearsal for Butterfly. I'm not very nervous because I don't have to do much. We're running a cue to cue, so I don't have to worry about my crazy costume changes. I do want to make sure I scope out the backstage area, however, so I know exactly where I'll put everything. I have five different costumes in our twenty-four minute piece and several props, so I need to make sure nothing gets lost and I have a system in place so I won't be too stressed out.

This week has been incredibly stressful for me. On top of Butterfly rehearsals twice this week I've had something else on every other night and it's been well...just a bad idea.

I ended up having to medicate for my anxiety disorder yesterday, and truth be told I should have done it again today, but I don't like medicating for anything, let alone something that I know I could control if I just let myself relax and take some time to de-stress.

Michael did give me some time off today and I got some things off my plate on the home front and got some things in order for the play I'll be directing this spring (W;t by Margaret Edson). Unfortunately, I tried to take a bubble bath and the water ended up balancing out all wrong so instead of a relaxing warm bath I got an intense and uncomfortable cold bath that lasted all of five minutes before I stopped caring that I'd wasted gallons of water and just toweled off.

I was ten minutes late to rehearsal.

I abhor lateness. To be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late. To be late is not an option. This is the credo I learned from my high school musical director, and so I continue said credo to this day in my own life (which probably adds a lot to my stress...)

But, in spite of my abhorring, late I was.

Luckily, everyone else in the cast + our fearless director had just figured out how to get into the building and get everything in order, so no one was very upset with me, and we chatted a few minutes and then went straight into a run.

I decided that I would forget my costumes tonight, my dresser wouldn't be there anyway, so the last scene wasn't doable, and I really wanted to focus on my character.

I don't have a lot of time to prepare between scenes, even though each of my appearances occurs after a temporal span of years, so I like to work character when I can so that everything just snaps into place for me for each section as the piece rolls along. It's hard to explain in any way other than that.

Though I'm still working physicality to be as perfect as possible, I've also decided that if we win this festival thing and make it to regionals, I may seriously consider trying to pass as a man myself for a day. I'd like to try it somewhere no one knows me and just try it out. I worry because my bone structure is very feminine, especially in my arms and my face, but I feel like this would help me more than anything else with my character. I'm thinking maybe I'll go up to the city with some friends who won't be completely freaked out by the exercise, and just go and see things and eat out and go shopping and things like that, just to see what it's like to try to pass and live as a man.

I talked with Michael about it and he said that he could deal with it. He wasn't so keen on it when I said I might like to go clubbing as a guy. That might be a little more disturbing. The only reason I considered it was because in my second appearance in the show as my character (in somewhat reality, not counting my appearance in the butterfly field as feminine Emily) I imagine that he is headed out to a club with some friends. I, personally, think I would hate clubbing. I have this anxiety disorder thing going on and I hate crowds and people close to me and tight spaces - but I'm pretty sure David likes clubbing. Mostly because at the club no one is staring at him, no one is wondering about him, he's just accepted as himself with no questions asked. I think he has a group of friends he met at school (college, I think) who are supporting him through this whole transition thing and they act as sort of his "wing-men" - they treat him as a man, so other accept him as a man. I imagine he has both guy friends and girl friends helping him out with the whole thing, acting as his support network because his mother is so out of it. That's just my imagining. David has been on my mind a lot lately, as I suppose he should be.