I know I've said it before...but I have to say it again...I'm so grateful to be a part of this cast. Last night was, I think, the most intense rehearsal yet. I think that we're all starting to get more comfortable with each other, within ourselves around everyone...and we're really starting to let go of any inhibitions we may have been holding. We're all really starting to connect together as a whole...meld together to be one energetic entity...instead of a group of people separately acting their own part.
I've always acted...from one place to another...one person to the next...one smile to the next. As a child, I was pretty fucked up in the head...see, I'm D.I.D...for those who don't know, that's Dissociative Identity Disorder, or, more commonly known as Multiple Personalities.
As I child, I had no idea what that was--I had no name for it..and I sure as hell didn't talk about it. No one knew...if they did know, it was never spoken of. As a teenager I told my mother, but she blew it off...not that I don't think she believed me, it runs in the family...my mother is DID...my uncle, her brother, is schizophrenic...we're a family of crazies, and that ain't no lie...but, what she didn't take seriously was how it affected me.
I never gave her any details of how it affected me, but as a child and teenager, when my brain was still developing, when hormones were changing as I was growing...everything was so confusing inside that most of the time I walked around in a haze...or I just...wasn't there...it was my face, my voice...it was me...but it wasn't me at all. It was one personality or another...and when I became too stressed, that was my escape. I just...retreated into my head and someone else took over. It's really hard to explain this in a way that doesn't make it sound...hokey...I guess..."What do you mean you just vanish and someone else takes over..?"
I mean just that...when someone else is out...I remember nothing. Some times I will get flashes of things that I don't remember, scenes from life that I wasn't there for.
But as a child...a smaller child...there was so much confusion...I felt like Sybil...but despite the paint that was consuming me...I acted...I acted like that happy go-lucky kid. I acted...nothing was real...everything was a creation from within and soon enough the lines of reality blurred.
Reality blurred for me last night and I was so...deep within that character...that everything else vanished. I no longer saw the rehearsal space...Jesse was no longer there...the chairs that had the fabric over them became real tents...my skin became cold...by the "fire" I got a little warmer...when I turned and the tents were destroyed...MY home was gone and I felt it...I saw my tent in shambles...as well as everyone else's.
There were few moments, when Jesse told us "from the top"...when we'd wander back to our places, pick up our tents and sit down...before he called that silent moment to settle back into the characters...........this reality came back....it all came flooding back...where I was, WHO I was, who everyone else was and I'd look around and I'd see Matt or Barb or Jesse and I saw, in that moment, not the people who we were portraying, but who we all are...then the moment would fade and the lines would blur and everything would....shape shift again....and I was in Tent City in New York...not in a building, acting a play, in Danville, Illinois.
While we were singing Seasons of Love...I was looking around at the cast...some would meet my eyes...and I'd smile...even a little. A small up turn of one corner of my mouth, but my eyes smiled to...truly saying hello to whomever I connected eyes with...this I do to anyone...a stranger on the street...someone I pass in the isle of the grocery store...I do this to every one in a way that isn't...."oh, we made eye contact so I'll smile"...no...I do it because...well...I don't know this person...not really or not at all...but if I can really acknowledge them, if they see that I SEE them there...that they aren't invisible, that I smile at them and smile true...maybe that person will be able to smile back...that maybe...despite all the hardships and heartache and troubles that someone may be going through at any given time in life...if only for that one moment in their day, they may not feel invisible. That a stranger saw them and smiled...maybe it'll make their day worth living for...A Season of Love from a stranger...even if that season only lasts a moment.
It's all moments in time...everything...just some moments seems to pass longer than others.
Never before have I been a part of something like this...this is truly an amazing experience...and something that I will never forget. Last night was a whole different kinda high. The emotions were high...both within our characters and within ourselves...
As Barb said in her blog, I too thought that I'd have an easy part of being in the ensemble. I didn't think--or didn't know--or perhaps didn't really think about--just how much of myself that I'd be putting into this...I had no idea what to expect...but I am surprised...and I am glad.
The night before auditions I was talking to Michelle...I asked her if I should audition...I was second guessing myself...which is something that I used to do much more often than I do now...but Michelle talked me into it...and I'm so so so glad that I got to be a part of this...that I didn't let myself talk myself out of it...that I listened to Michelle (she's usually right about these things)..."It'll be good for you." she said and she was right. This is good for me.
I feel connected to all of you in such ways that I've never really known before...and some people...I haven't really had a chance to talk to at all...but that hasn't seemed to matter...not because I don't want to talk to everyone...get to know everyone...but that lack of conversation hasn't...blocked those people from this feeling I have developed...because...even if I haven't been able to talk much to some of the cast...we're all in the cast...and at some point, even for a minor moment, I have connected with everyone in some way.
This has been something special...and I can't fucking wait until we actually have everything all put together and we're performing to the audience....I KNOW that we're going to absolutely blow them away because THEY don't know what's coming...we as the cast know some about what's coming...and I know that personally, I'm blown away every rehearsal by everyone...by Jesse and his amazing vision for this play...it's mind blowing. Absolutely mind blowing.
