Absurd

"In college, when I first decided to be an actor, I was reading Camus, and he talked about the absurd, that the actor's life is one of the true absurdist lifestyles, being an actor is really living an absurd life. The more I do it...it doesn't get less absurd."

-- Kevin Kline, in Actors at Work, by Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan

--

The Children's Theatre has left the building.

And entered another one, six exits up the highway from the old space. On I-71 north, you take the 8A exit to Ridge Road South, make a left, bear right onto Duck Creek, go through a light and make a right at the next onto Oaklawn, and up the hill on your left is the new space, soon to have a sign. We didn't have a sign at the old building because it was owned by a computer products business on the first floor, and the folks who ran it were kind of jerks. Also, without a sign, and on a street where cars parked overnight on the street might be broken into, we appear more desperate and thus, more worthy of donations.

(Of course, not having a sign made us ten times harder for parents to find...)

Now we're in a newer building, leased from a Board member, in which we get the entire bottom floor and half of the top. We share with a realty agency.

Unfortunately, the basement is still unfinished. Cement floor, exposed ceiling wires, walls that have yet to be knocked down. A gray area full of noise. We don't mind waiting a few weeks for them to finish down there--really, we don't--but because that office and rehearsal space is not available to us, we are very tight on space. Instead of moving one floor's worth of office supplies, equipment, and costumes into twice as much space, we crammed into one-half as much space.

Or, to put it melodramatically: I used to have a cubicle, and now I share a conference room with three people!

--

As big moves go, it went well--no clumsy mishaps or surprising agonies. It's amazing to me how much random stuff had accumulated in that office, hiding in odd places like box-shaped animals hibernating. There is a whole pile of African art that was never on display, and which cannot be sold for whatever reason, which now sits in a different storage closet. And extra rolls of rugs and carpets, all imported, some of which are worth two-thirds of my salary. And boxes of envelopes with the old address printed on them. And too many show posters and paintings in frames to count, all propped against the hallway walls, waiting to be hung or forgotten again.

Theatres store up so many priceless treasures with vague promises of future utility. Absurd.

--

Across the city, we held the first official meeting to plan the Covedale After-School Drama Program. I met Allison, a college student studying theater locally and working at the Covedale's business office, who will be my assistant for the next few months. (Her official title, I think, is assistant coordinator, but I like to think of her as a collaborator and fellow instructor.) The Perrinos are generous enough to let Allison and me structure and run the organization the way we want to, and to do so in an environment full of healthy expectations but little foreboding judgments.

In other words, we are free to create the program we want to create. This is the first time I've been in a situation where I have this kind of freedom and responsibility, and while it scares me a little, it liberates me a lot. Not that working at TCTC is a form of slavery, but it is my day job--it pays the rent and buys the food. The Covedale offers me a chance to have a paying project, something that I can really wrap my mind around, my own sphere of influence.

And because I've lately toyed with the idea of saving up and eventually starting my own company, it's a welcome challenge.

--

But absurdity persists. I am reading a book of interviews with people who don't know exactly what it it is they do, but they can sort of talk about how they do it, but they don't like to be asked. I have to make or find at least two dozen more props, including Anne Frank's distinctive diary, in the next three days. And tomorrow morning, I will meet four actors who are about to do what I started doing one year ago.

On a final note, I have contracts, roles and scripts for three of the four main-stage shows: Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast, Jr., the Stage Manager in Holiday Follies, and Tom Sawyer. Not sure yet about Jack and the Beanstalk, because it still isn't finished, and we're still not sure if we can get someone to play the Giant.