September 1

Well, my learning for the third day of the month will clue you in to why I haven't posted any pages. But we'll get there. For now, I'm just posting pictures and learning. The pages will have to come later.

My learning for day one was:

Today I learned that getting on stage, even for just a rehearsal, is what makes everything else go away for me.

As for the picture, I just have a photo of my script at this point, but I may get a friend to snap a picture of me at rehearsal some night.

I got sick this week. I don't really know why. I still don't know if it was allergies or a cold or what, but I felt horrible! I didn't sleep for three or four nights - I'd go to bed around 11:00, lay awake until 1ish, finally go to sleep, only to wake up around 3 or 3:30, unable to go back to sleep. On the plus side, I got a lot of homework done in those wee hours of the morning.
 Along with getting sick, we started rehearsals for the fall Shakespeare production. This year we're doing a compilation show with scenes from 10 different plays - which means everyone's playing multiple characters. I'm playing Lady Macbeth (from Macbeth), Desdemona (from Othello), and Kate (from the Taming of the Shrew). I'm most excited about Kate.

I was really not looking forward to how busy I was going to be, and to having to be all active and stuff during rehearsal, with me being sick and all. But Wednesday night, when we blocked my scenes, I found that I had this sudden energy and excitement that came from nowhere. I felt better.

I've had this experience before - during The Importance of Being Earnest, I think I was having an allergic reaction one night because I had this horrible stomach ache, and I almost called in sick to rehearsal. But it was close to performance and I didn't want to disappoint, so I went anyway, and somewhere in the middle of rehearsal, my stomach stopped hurting and I found I was actually enjoying myself, despite feeling bad.

In the musical Next to Normal, the daughter, Natalie, sings a song called "Everything Else." She's playing the piano, a Mozart piece, and singing about how when she plays the piano, everything else goes away.



Now, everything about Next to Normal resonates with me in some way or another, but this song has taken on particular meaning in light of my learning Wednesday. It was exciting to me to realize that acting is truly what makes everything else go away. And I am lucky to get to do it.