Bagged My Lucille Ball Moment

what a *chefs kiss* beginning to this chapter of small town Texas mothering and performing.

I did my first traditional play!

I was the lead.

It was terrific fun.

Alan gets a kick out of the story that it was my first play, with my heaps of relevant experience.

But it’s true, it was.

And as “first” as it felt, in so many ways, it also felt obvious–as though I hold some past life load of experience tucked away behind my ears. Let down to fall into place like dominos.

I’ve done scripted pieces, though not on a stage.
I’ve done things on a stage, though not scripted.

Last Christmas, I was in a wonderfully meaningful production that took place in the woods at the Wizard Academy in Dripping Springs, TX. I played an angel guiding the audience through a series of experiences along a winding, hilly path. There was some dialogue exchange, but mostly lengthy monologues and speaking directly to the audience.

I’ve been known to do a lot of things like that. Productions that, if not delivered via a screen, have me speak and work directly with the audience.

Having the fourth wall up and being shepherded by a thoroughly memorized script was delightfully freeing.

Being on and off and on again as I ducked backstage and back on was also new. Usually, I am in productions where I turn on a character and stay within their living creation for long lengths of time.

I was in a circus production in Downtown Los Angeles at The Count’s Den a few years ago. I played an orphan dancing clown at a funeral. I’d stay in character and with the audience for the duration, much like my angel, both running a few times a night for about an hour and some change.

We just wrapped this play at the Gaslight Baker Theater in Lockhart, TX, and it ran for just under an hour. I played Grace, aka Mother, in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. While I did spend most of the hour on stage, I did duck offstage a few times for brief intervals. The energy I could reserve, knowing that I would have respite to check in with Julia and consider my next moment with the audience, allowed me more energy to thrive, have fun, and be honest when that time came.

That (in combination with the freedom of a long memorized script and the opportunity to do pages and pages of it at a time) was thrilling. Energized. Energizing. Allowed for the gusto to do it all, again and again, three weekends and nine times over without the lonely come-down I typically feel after a show or wrapped film project.

Those drilled scenes and breaks backstage, along with the bubble of a fourth wall, also allowed me the energy to perform with an earnest gusto I otherwise did not have had for life during those Fall weeks. I was peaking with the usual exhaustion and nausea of my first trimester. My hormones were changing–hCG flooding in. My ligaments were stretching to make room for my baby. I would metaphorically crawl my way to rehearsals every night and back home again, and I would sit down to take deep breaths between scenes backstage during shows.

In an immersive production, I would have dreaded the thought. In a film, it would have been excruciating to be the perfectly clear-headed, ready-for-anything, probably freezing, overly shielded and isolated and judged starlight on set for those often 12-16 hour “hurry up and wait” days.

Mm, that’s another thing. I discovered that in a play, once the curtain is up, the director is seated way back in the tech booth. And as the lead, I am in control. Sure, the blocking and lines and character are set, but that ain’t restricting as much as it is liberating. The energy…the listening, the delivery, the moment…it wouldn’t be interupted and would reliably keep on keeping on. If someone made a mistake, it was up to us to figure it out without giving it away.

What a neat little game.

Plays feel like acting without the prison bars I so often feel in various ways elsewhere.

It’s the chance to get to do my craft without all the sacrifice of my soul or well-being.

It’ll be a while until I get to work magick at the altar of my craft, the stage.

It’ll be a while as I grow this child inside me and raise it enough to be away for long periods of days and nights, upsetting routines and a certain stability which I intend to offer them for quite some time. That isn’t to say my craft is on pause by any means. I believe that as actors, we are always at the work of it. Listening to life around us, paying attention to how experiences move us. Tasting the posture of the residue they leave. Garnering our palette for with which to paint when the time comes…

Mmm… and for the rest of my life, that time will always come.

A hui ho,

Julia