A few realizations

It's amazing how intense this play has become. When we got together for a first reading it seemed so...I don't know: funny and harmless. Now, after a few months of rewritings, draining rehearsals and tweaking, it is an intensely personal, incredibly emotional experience. Perhaps this has something to do with Dan's screams when his emotions are extracted against his will. Perhaps it's Laura, announcing the extractions with a measured, chilling voice. Perhaps it's Conni who has become incredible in the part of Cordelia Stark. She's always been very good, intensely professional, focused and graceful, but somehow, Cordelia has made her even better. I sit there in awe of her improv moments thanking my lucky stars. Mike, as the android who can be programed to become any character the emotives need, is in his element. As "The Performance Artist With No Talent" though, he channels something between Brecht and Fellini I never thought I would see on my stage.

And then there's Ellie, of whom I ask so much, whose transitions from devastating unhappiness to amazing well-being are so abrupt, she has about two seconds to adjust her character. And she does it every time, carrying the most difficult parts of the war scenes, demanding a colossal love affair from Gray, enacting moments of suburban heaven and unspeakable humiliation with equal conviction.

We spent an excruciating weekend setting lighting cues (with less than 15 instruments) until the stage looked almost the way I imagined it. What poor theatre? We got that beat. Grotowski has nothing on us. I was wondering out loud, the other day, what to call the theatre beyond "poor theatre" so we could name this thing we do every year. Catastrophic theatre? Asylum theatre? Trashcan theatre? Perhaps. It continues to amaze me how many extremely well-funded, terrible productions I've seen in the past 20 years or so. Perfect lighting systems, exquisite sound booths, money for costumes and props...and yet, at the end of the evening, you wonder why you spent two hours there instead of doing something useful...

I don't know how Jamie, with whom I've worked for the past 11 years, does it every time. I have never seen anyone so capable of improvising lighting cues the way she does. Everything is so very difficult. Money, lighting, sound -- and yet, at the end of our productions people get married or get desperate (same thing, really), or cry, or go home and spend the next few hours in uninterrupted silence. All of this has happened to us, so let's hear it for trashcan theatre, for extraordinary (and extraordinarily patient) people, for lots of work and tons of worries. Perhaps my maddening attention to detail -- the thing that keeps me awake at night when, instead of sleeping, I make lists of things that need fine-tuning -- is what saves us every time. I know people hate it during these last weeks of nightly rehearsals, but on opening night it all pays off.

I hope this happens on Saturday as well. It needs to happen, it must. I am too attached to this mad play to see it fail because of a few, insecure transitions. Let's hope I can communicate this to the cast and crew tonight. They're tired, overworked. They need me to tell them how I feel about them, but I'm not good at speeches, so I write these entries hoping they will read them and know how much I appreciate everything they do. But it's late and I have to go, so this entry will have to end abruptly, like an emotion extracted prematurely from its host.