Practical matters

There are two episodes that stand out in my mind when I think about the weeks preceding a production: one is the Walmart incident when, oblivious to my surroundings, I shouted at Steven (the artist/set designer I worked with until 2003), "Guns, Steven, we need guns!" The second is something similar to a ritual that happens every time before a play, something I dread but find oddly comforting: mopping the stage, getting rid of months of dirt and dust, then adding a thin layer of "Mop And Glo." Yes: glo not glow. It's a marketing thing. Mop and Glo is my best friend: it makes even the ugliest surface beautiful, it seals and protects, it gives the illusion of class...Ok. I know this sounds completely idiotic, but when the spectacle is more important than the text -- when the spectacle is the text -- a classy floor makes all the difference. In my perfect world -- the world in which an obscenely large inheritance allows me to quit my job and buy a theatre building -- the floors are always amazing: translucent black marble, rare wide hardwood planks, black and white tile...Anyway. The mopping is reassuring. Once I mop the floor before each rehearsal, I know there's no turning back. The show has been announced, the press release is ready, the interview is scheduled, invitations have been sent. I think about this because there's always a moment before each show when I want to cancel it, to take it back, to forget about it. It's too scary to think about -- my words in the mouths of these people, the images in my head now live on the stage, the music I've been collecting finally in its place, in the body of the text.

I collect songs. I'll hear a melody, a song on a soundtrack, anything, and although I don't know where, in the play, it belongs (at the moment I hear the song the play doesn't exist yet), I know it belongs there. So I put it on a disc and wait. Months later, the play takes shape and then these songs I've been gathering for a long time finally make sense.

The Walmart episode with Steven...I often wonder if it happened that way, if it happened at all. I remember it distinctly, but that doesn't mean anything. Some years ago, a theatre critic was talking about "a theatre of the first person," an intimate dramatic affair during which the actor brings to the stage episodes from his real life: the suicide of a friend or family member, home movies, photographs, recordings. He goes through all these memories that are now narrated for the benefit of the audience and, in doing so, he recreates some of them differently. Perhaps, reshaped, this memory looks better now than it did in reality...What is the point? I don't know: therapy, probably, because theatre is both an extremely therapeutic and an incredibly neurotic process. It's that one love affair you can't get rid of. So yes: I know we were looking for guns and I know we were in Walmart. Perhaps I did shout in Steven's direction. Perhaps I remember I did because I miss him so.

But whenever I get this sentimental, I remember a line from a novel I read in my youth. I don't remember the book (I was a teenager when I read it), but I do remember the line: "That's enough sentiment for one day, Margaret!" Must have been a British novel: stiff upper lip and all that. I also remember "England expects every woman to do her duty." That's what happens when I do a play: daily rations of sentiment and lots of expectations.

Susan picked me up from school today and we went shopping: mopping supplies, white paint, black paint, white props. The Home Depot people look so much friendlier in commercials...
After Susan left I started painting everything I could lay my hands on: tables, chairs, the intertitles we use in the play (my homage to silent film). Tomorrow I have to somehow get mics for the stage (both lapel mics and regular ones); I have to transport, with the help of the stage manager, the giant tree-woman silhouette to Fletcher (the theatre space in the Art and Architecture building), I have to make sure we have all the 63 props I swore I'd do without in this production. Then, somewhere between comfort and uncertainty, the rehearsal can begin.