Butterfly: Road to One Act Festival Part 4

So it's over now.

I'm not sure how to feel about everything.

We came away with first runner up - which basically means if either of the two plays they chose to go on decides they don't want to or can't make it to regionals, THEN we get to go. So...pretty much we aren't going to regionals. We did come away with best original script, and I am really happy for Trish, our writer, she deserved it, especially since during the judges critique they were very harsh on the writing - obviously that was just to mask their true feelings about the merit of this piece. We also won an award for technical excellence. No acting awards.

That's hard for me.

I have never been so anxiety-ridden as I was that weekend - not abnormal anxiety - normal person anxiety. I felt like we really had a shot at winning. I didn't know exactly what to expect from the event or who would be there or how it would all go or if I would succeed in making all of my costume changes in time. I worried about the audience response, especially since much of the weekend was taken up with comedies. Not that there's anything wrong with comedy, it's just that ours is not a comedy, and if the audience is expecting one, we might not get as great a response...

Here I am talking like it didn't already happen.

I admit that overall it was a GREAT weekend. I learned SO much from the wonderful women I spent the time with.

I was sad about the judges.

I really felt like David made them uncomfortable. As he should have. But especially from the male judge I felt a lot of negative energy.

I also felt like they gave a lot of just plain mean comments to all of the plays - not just ours - things that couldn't help really in the future, just made you feel like you sucked.

On the ride home I just didn't know what to say, how to talk about what I was feeling. I was glad we did so well but it was almost worse that we got first runner up. It made us know how close we were.

The judges deliberated for three hours while all the casts and crews and whatnot sat in a restaurant waiting and waiting - long after the coffee had dried up, still we sat. It was agonizing. After all that waiting - nothing.

I knew as soon as they announced the acting awards and none of us were mentioned that there was no way we'd won.

That damned acting awards is tearing me up. I admit it. This is the first time in my entire theatre career that I felt like I could honestly say I was good. I have never worked this hard on a role. I have been told I was good in the past. I have felt good ABOUT my performance, but I have never felt so validated as an actor as in this particular piece.

It's not just that.

This piece is important. I wanted it to go on just because this was the kind of piece that people need to see. Something that teaches. Something that makes the audience question everything on the way home from the theatre. That's what theatre is about, after all. If a play doesn't leave you questioning, it hasn't done it's job. Even comedy should be able to pull this off if they're worth their salt.

I guess it's just a let down.

I don't regret a second of the time spent. It has been the best theatrical experience I have ever had, and that's saying a lot, since I've been doing theatre since the toddler years, quite literally.

The weekend was simply incredible - the festival itself aside.

We stayed at our producer's house (okay, it's her boyfriend, Steve's house...but whatever). It was SUCH a beautiful house. We ate amazing food. I learned lots about vegan cooking. We went for a 2 mile run Saturday morning. We watched the video of the production from June 2009 and saw how much we'd grown. We got lost all over the area about a billion times. We listened to music from Quebec. We did yoga. We read books. We discussed politics and religion and feminism and gay rights and abortion and art and being an artist and a mother and just about everything else you could possibly discuss. I felt like for a brief little weekend I was sort of living my fantasy of living in a community of artists - the weekend has fed my creativity into the week. I feel like doing everything. I feel more myself than I have felt...well...ever.

I'm excited about my art. I'm excited about who I am and who the people around me are and who my family is. I missed them like crazy while I was gone. I missed my own bed and my own house and the feeling of my husband's skin against mine and the feeling of my daughter climbing up into my lap to have If You Give a Moose a Muffinn read one more time and the smiling eyes and kisses on the cheek provided by my five year old son.

Everything about the weekend honestly made me feel ALIVE. I am sad about us not winning. It's hard for me to believe it's over, to be honest. I am sad that I didn't get an acting nod to feed my ego. But I am so thankful for that weekend or rejuvenation and deeper understanding of who I am. Of what it means to be a woman. I feel like I've really been missing out all these years.

Oh - before I wrap up completely, I wanted to note that I've added Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues to "my favorites" widget - it's in the sidebar there to your right. If you don't know the piece, I recommend you read it with an open mind. The piece is to be produced on Valentine's Day. V-day. Until the violence stops - the Vagina Monologues are about stopping violence against women. About power for women. About owning your womanhood. If you haven't read the piece, go over to the widget and click and order it and give it a try. It's quickly become a theatrical feminist classic.

Butterfly: Road to One Act Festival, Part 3

Last Saturday we headed to the Round House Theatre for tech-in.

It was a really fun day for me and for the other actors, but a really stressful day for Lisa, our tech guru for the production. We had sixty minutes to use the stage - during that time, we had to load-in our set, spike our set, focus our lights, program the light board for our show, run a cue to cue (which didn't exactly happen), set our props, and then load everything out. Sixty minutes was not enough time to do what we wanted and needed to do, but I think we left with a decent feel for where everything was and how everything was going to work this Saturday.

As for the actors and the fun day... we all drove up together with Gloria, the actress who plays David's mother in the piece, and who is really the main character. All of the action in Butterfly, for those of you who are unfamiliar, takes place in the mind of Ruby, David's mother and murderer. The three of us actors had a great time hanging out on our little road trip, having a fun lunch at the Macaroni Grille, and then road tripping back all in time for the theatre banquet held by the theatre who is producing Butterfly. It was a very good day.

I admit, however, that I am nervous out of my mind about Saturday.

Tomorrow night we have a dress/run of the show at the local college. My dresser, Debbie, will be there so that we can run the changes until we feel confident in how they're going to go. Instead of a nice, large, flat surface for my clothing, there is only enough room backstage at the Round House for a folding chair and a stool (for my few props). My biggest fears are that I will forget to set something before we begin or that my binding clips won't function correctly, or that I will be without one of my costume pieces, or that I will not have time to finish my final change. The changes have always been the biggest stressor in the piece for me. The last change being the most stressful - I have thirty seconds to change into dress pants with a belt, dress shoes, a dress shirt, and a tie. I hate buttons. I failed them in kindergarten. They are truly evil in my eyes. Moreso now.

I know that we have a good show. I'm trying not to let the pressure of this thing get to me, but I admit that even though I've been on stage for as long as I can remember - Mom and Dad claim age three - this is the first time I've been in a theatrical competition of any sort. The theatre feels we have a good chance of winning, which mounts even further pressure on us as we head up the road on Saturday.

I'm trying to just focus on myself, on David, on the acting and the presentation of the message and forget about the points deducted or added to our score as a result of every little thing we do. It's proving tougher than I thought.

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.

Butterfly: Road to One Act Festival

Since Butterfly was chose as the representative piece for the Newtowne Players for the Maryland State One Act Festival, we have been rehearsing and polishing for the last few months.

I've been researching along with the process.

I was worried about rehearsal tonight because I felt like there were a lot of unknowns. We changed David's costuming significantly. I was really nervous that the clothing would be more difficult to manage as far as quick changes, but it looks like things are pretty simplistic and I agree that the look for David is better. I'm a little nervous because we've change one costume from the second appearance of David to the first, and I have a lot of physical associations with the costumes for this piece that I'll really have to work through to get into character and physicality correctly in the new garb. I'm confident I can do it.

We also re-worked the slap. My reaction before was deemed too feminine, and so I polled a bunch of guy friends on facebook in note form to see how they would react if their mother slapped them. It was a really interesting study and I learned a lot. Tonight we worked that reaction but we only ran it once. I'm hoping to run it several more times before the performance so that my reaction can be more natural. I'm thinking entirely too much right now - I want it to be my gut reaction for the performance, not something I have to put on quickly. I'm not sure I want it to be completely natural, I'm still struggling with where David is in the transition process at this point and also with whether or not a transgendered man would instinctively react more as a man or woman. If you are trans, you generally feel that you were born into the wrong body, so I'd have to think that David's initial reaction would then be male... so I'm going to go with that. Trish was thinking along that line as well.

I'm so wrapped up in this process. I've never done so much research for a role and the piece is only 25 minutes. I feel very close to David. He's an important character for me and to me. The relationships in the piece really mean something.

This is also the first piece of which I've been a part where I feel the message is so important. Not that The Crucible isn't, but this is so poignant and so gripping and so unexpected - and the message is LOVE. Unconditional love - at least that's how I see it every time. David is hungry for this unconditional love and acceptance and he'd rather die than not have it in his life. Literally.

I think that we will do well at the festival - whether or not we go home with the winning piece.

We have two more rehearsals until all of our set and props will be left at the Roundhouse Theatre, then one more after that just to touch base and maybe run lines and discuss last minute details. After that, it's on with the show at Roundhouse.

We have a tech run in the space on the 9th, and that evening is the awards banquet for Newtowne. I'm wearing my little black dress. Something to contrast my appearing so often as a man :-)