Bulls

"Katrina, give me your hand, your heart, your vow, / For you are my dove, my lamb, and my...cow."

-- Ichabod Crane, in Kathryn Schultz Miller's stage adaptation of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

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Today we lay to rest the first show of our season. It will stay dormant until we exhume the thing in two weeks as our tour begins. That means a dress rehearsal this afternoon, complete with my nasty, sweaty self (seriously, I don't normally sweat this much in 45 minutes), and the cream of the Children's Theatre crop, the bosses of bosses, watching and participating. I don't know why, but it sort of feels like we're ancient Greek sailors, praying for favorable winds from the gods, or something. I hope no one's killed anyone's bull on accident.

Fun fact: Kathryn Schultz Miller, the adaptionator and playwright of our show, founded our theatre WBW (way back when). Sleepy Hollow is now readable on GoogleBooks, too.

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Was told again last night, fleetingly, in passing, "You're an actor," and I reacted with typical Stewartian ambivalence: a deep walrus groan, shoulders dancing, eyebrows worming. I said I didn't really feel like an actor, didn't really consider myself a "theatre person," and as I spoke, I realized that I didn't have any idea what either of those things might feel like, anyway.

Theatre people, after all, are people,--people, people, and always, people--and while "life in a box is better than no life at all," it's still a box, and it seems to me that many theatre types spend a lot of effort trying to escape from boxes, cages and stages. We return to work with a sort of reluctant vigor, a mindset more driven by the agony of absence than the prestige of presence. It's the one job that seems like it ought to be nothing but fun, and yet, directors constantly remind everyone to make sure "to have fun." In a way, the plight of every artist (however childish or amateurish the art might be, or however lofty and pretentious and challenging and fresh it may be) is to hate what they love.

Camus said he was most interested in Sisyphus at the moment when he looks down the mountain at his rock, smiles, and descends again. The pushing is just work, sweat, and panting; but the release of the rock, the return to the depths, the will to fall to crests and sing in sadness--this is what really jimmies the lock.

In fake life as in real life, enjoy the show. Right?