Do I wake or sleep?

[singsong]♫ I just got a Macbook ♪[/singsong]

Eeeeh! It's an itty-bitty dainty lil' Macbook Air--can't wait to play with it! Naturally tonight is the night I HAVE to do laundry--no play until later. I was verrrrry tempted to get an iPad but ultimately went with the Air.

Anya cracks me up--she really "gets" Tibby's voice, his whiney, "poor pathetic me" inner monologue. (As Tesse would put it, "I've never been fed. Ever.") The other night she started singing songs from Hair in his voice--"Easy to Be Hard," and the opening of "The Flesh Failures" ("We starve...") are especially appropriate.

Still plowing through Medieval Warfare: A History--I'm trying to get way ahead on the readings for the second half of the semester. Just finished a chapter on naval warfare.

Ryan and I did what Duncan and I did last year (Duncan had rehearsal last night) and talked to students from my alma mater--we met them at the Gershwin Hotel last night. Had a BALL, the students were thrilled to talk to us, even though most of them were not theater students! (The trip is for arts students in general.) They asked us all sorts of questions, so thoughtful too! They were very excited to hear my production company is named Holla Holla Productions--that's a Sweet Briar cheer! ("Here's to ya, Sweet Briar, Holla Holla Holla, nothin' that you cannot do..."). I didn't get a chance to talk to Christian about the Thyme project afterward (she had to run out) but from what little she said about it, it seems she's still working on it.

Tim's party overlooking the parade route is tomorrow! Can't wait!

And Thyme is over.  As Duncan said, there was a good amount of stress with its going up, but once it settled in, it was a fantastic experience.  I absolutely love playing my merrie trickster, my id, my easily amused little child Puck.  Not an easy role, though--I worked my ass off on its physicality.  I was going for a couple of things--a kind of animalistic movement, because Puck is so much less restrained by societal norms than a human would be, there's a closer connection to the id, the purely physical.  So I was going for the immediacy you see in animals, especially predators--that springy, immediate action paired with that absolute stillness when hunting animals "point"--that is, when they sight their quarry (you see it in dogs and cats).  The other thing I was incorporating was a kind of cartoonish, exaggerated expression, where every emotion is fully committed to and physically expressed, a la Roger Rabbit.  I felt pretty good about how it came out--it felt organic, I don't know how well it read.  But I did get some nice feedback from audience members so something I was doing was working.  I really would love to do Midsummer again--doing Thyme made a lot of those lines come back.  My mistress with a monster is in love!...The king doth keep his revels here tonight/Take heed the queen come not within his sight/For Oberon is passing fell and wrath/because that she as her attendant hath/a lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king/She never had so sweet a changeling...Captain of our fairy band/Helena is here at hand!...I remember absolutely flying in from stage left for that entrance, so much fun.  I do have specific ideas about how Puck should look, because of all that energy.  He should be small/thin and very fast--there are numerous textual references about how fast he is.  He shouldn't be this huge lumbering dude like Stanley Tucci, ugh!  So miscast...

At any rate it was so completely awesome to get to work with so many old friends again, like Michelle and Kelly, and then to meet new ones like Matthew.  He is such a talented actor, although I REALLY WISH he nailed the lines better.  I think once he'd gottten to the point where he basically knew them and wouldn't go up on them during a performance, he was so relieved (he had to learn that part quickly) that he never looked back over the script again.  Regardless he is terrific, he always made me laugh during the "Demetrius is in love with Lysander" scene.  (My favorite line: "Blah blah blah, your tears do make me yawn."  I just love his unabashed selfishness.)  I told him he made that scene great for me--I didn't get bored with having to stay still for 7 pages or whatever it is, because I genuinely found him hilarious.  He told me "you give the nicest compliments!"  I also loved Rebecca's performance in that scene.  "Does no one want my ladylove?"  So cute!

The one kind of annoying thing was the whole festival thing--argh, I just hate that 15 minutes in/out restriction.  It is SO frustrating when you have very specific hair and makeup *and* you're the first one on stage (I had this problem for Prince Trevor as well).  I loathe getting ready in the hallways or the lobby of the theater, it seems so amateurish.  I get that they want to maximize the theater rental by cramming in as many shows as possible but still *grumble.*

...and dust behind the door go sweep.

So final dress for Thyme is tomorrow. We had it at the theater, which is down in Noho, right near where Kevin (Lori's BF) used to live, so I know the 'hood a little bit. Tech was a little tense, as these things always are--actors are used to DOING and tech rehearsals are just always difficult because we stand around so much. (And we've been rehearsing in some small rooms, which makes me very claustrophobic--I have to stand at the window so I don't snap at someone.)  Most (if not all) of us are 100% on lines yet, although I'm pretty close. Poor Demetrius (who's a replacement for Luke) had a bad time of it yesterday but I like what he's doing with the character. For the most part, the costumes look FANTASTIC--Titania and Pumpkinseed look gorgeous, Oberon looks great and the lovers are all awesome. I'm a little mortified at these pants:



They make me look huge--the pants are too big and they're shiny and it just seems to suck like. I don't know what it looks like in real life as opposed to a picture, but I hope it's better. I'm supposed to be a fast-moving fairy, who makes a girdle 'round about the earth, not lumpy! Although this picture makes me giggle:



I'm all Creature of the Night....aaaaand I'm wearing pink pearl earrings.

The music is unbelievably perfect--it adds this magical, haunting, fey dimension that I LOVE. The music really completes the show, especially with the viola. Love, love, love it.

Can't wait to get this on its feet.

Thanks so much to everyone who posted or called me--I love you all. This has been crazy. Duncan, sure, you can tell Tony.

Saturday I slept badly and woke up around 11:30, and didn't leave my apartment until 1:00. I saw that the floor outside in the hallway still had a lot of blood on it--I went down in the elevator and realized I had left my phone in the apartment so I stayed in the elevator and hit 19 again. I could hear someone had just walked into the elevator bank (on the ground floor) and I was hoping not to share the elevator with them but at the last minute, some guy stuck his arm in the doorjamb. I was annoyed. Of course it was a young guy--and he hit 19 (my floor). I start getting tense. We ride up in silence together and I decide to let him walk out first so I'm behind him. He turns left (i.e., toward my apartment) and I watch as he walks right over this messy, bloody floor without even mentioning it. He doesn't say anything to me like "man, what happened?" or "do you know anything about this?" even though it's obvious it's right in front of my apartment. Man, I have some prize neighbors, huh? This guy is from the apartment next to mine--I didn't recognize him but it's a biggish family--two little girls (with whom I've chatted on several occasions and who have played with my cats), two parents whom I've never met, and I guess this...son?

So I go downstairs to maintenance to ask them if they could take care of the floor. The guy was horrified and asked me if I'd told the manager yet. I said no, I assumed the cops had. He said he didn't think so and took me to meet him. The manager was also horrified and said "tell the cops we have cameras in the lobby and in the elevators." I said I had--he said when they call me back, give them his number and he said he was going off to check the footage of that night. Their concern was actually quite validating--the complete disregard from my damn neighbors had me wondering "did this even HAPPEN?!"

I leave for Thyme rehearsal. On my way I stop on 54th Street where there used to be a security store that sold pepper spray and mace but I guess the store isn't there anymore. I get through rehearsal and afterward walk over to the ER of Roosevelt Hospital. I wait a couple of hours (not nearly as long as I'd feared though)--Mike joins me to share the wait--and eventually see the ER nurse and doctor. The nurse is awesome--she's this 6-foot-tall Valkyrie with short-cut blonde hair and beautiful light turquoise eyes who's all "You fought him off! That must be empowering..." and the doctor is her exact opposite, this tiny Indian woman who looks no older that 17 who kind of gasps and says "You're so brave!" They tell me it's too late for sutures, that it would atually increase that risk of infection if they re-opened the wound to stitch it. They give me a tetanus shot and dress the finger, and give me a prescription for antibiotics. While at the CVS to get the prescript filled, I browsed the Halloween aisle and bought the October issue of Country Living and two bags of cotton candy and dark chocolate, autumn-colored M&Ms. Mike made the astute comment that Halloween magazines for me are like porn.

Mike and I get back to my place and I call my mother last night and tell her. I also cleaned the blood all over my foyer and Mike helped. I threw out the purse I'd been carrying on Friday because it was covered with blood. It made sick to look at it. My mother called me again today and tried to convince me to take sick leave to go down there for a week or so. I don't think I have sick leave although I probably have some vacation time accrued.

Patricia (Titania in Thyme) and Tesse both very kindly offered to have me sleep at their respective apartments and I decided to stay at Tesse's. Jason and Paula met Tesse and me up in Inwood and we went to Guadalupe's and hung out for awhile. I was exhausted and had to wake up quite early this morning for rehearsal this morning. Luckily the A was running express, even thought it wasn't supposed to be. At rehearsal, Kelly came up to me and said "this is from Letham and me"--it was pepper spray. Rehearsal went better than yesterday and afterward Patricia suggested going to breakfast. Even though I was exhausted it felt weird to be alone so I went to Galaxy Diner. Afterward I went back to my apartment and SLEPT. When I finally woke up I called my dad and stepmother and filled them in. My stepmother (who is a psychologist who's specialized in women's issues and I'm sure she's dealt with things like this) talked to me about my need to get away and asked me to think about going up there for as long as I wanted. I said I'd think about it, and my dad decided to come down here to stay with me for a little while. They were so sweet, saying I was still their little girl and family has to stick together and they wanted to help me.

Obviously I'm going to have to move. I'm kind of dreading the big "yeah, I gotta break the lease" talk with the manager.

I'm still just so tired. I'm not even that tense or paranoid, I'm mostly just tired.

God, what an unbelievably exhausting weekend. Friday evening, after spending an hour at the internet cafe (my laptop is still down), I hied me over to the Xth Avenue Lounge for drinks with Alex, Don et al. I didn't stay too long, as I was pretty tired already and wanted to get a decent amount of sleep before the wedding. Saturday, I kept hitting the snooze button so I had less time than I'd planned to get ready but it all turned out okay nonetheless. ( Shallow, clothes-oriented blather that's not important compared to a wedding )

The ceremony was at the Bethesda Terrace--a nice mixture of informal and formal. Informal--no seating, bubbles being blown during the recessional. Formal--Alex and Don's dress (Alex had a lovely cream satin dress and Don was in tails. I love seeing men in tails, it's so elegant), a processional and recessional. The minister had baptized Alex--she must have some kind of picture in the attic, or else she was ordained at the age of 8. She looked very young! Alex and Don were so adorable during their ceremony and I loved the vows they wrote.

After the ceremony, Mickey and I were hanging out under the arch and Don and Duncan's father came by and I reintroduced myself (I'd met him the night before and I figured he probably didn't remember my name). Then I said "And this is Mickey--Mickey, Don, Duncan and I have all done shows together." Bob (D&D's dad) said "and you two are an item." We both said "oh no" and I said "no, we're just friends." Then I realized that sounded weird, so I added "Actually, Mickey has a fiancee in San Francisco, but she's in the process of moving here." Chris joined us and we thought the heat was getting to us, so we decided to go to the reception early and get a drink somewhere in the vicinity. Apparently we completely missed the excitement--poor Jason had had to call an ambulence after the heat got to him. (He'd run all the way up those steps to take a picture of the wedding gathering from Bethesda Terrace.)

Anyway, on 44th Street across the street from the reception venue, we saw a St. Andrew's Bar/Restaurant that looke promising. We went in and sat at the bar--they had a menu with at least 100 different kind of Scotch. Scotch from the Highlands, from Skye, from Perth, Spey, Arran, Orkney, the Lowlands. It was...dizzying. I ordered a "taster" (about an ounce?) of some arcane, peaty kind that was delicious. We also ordered fried oysters since I'd had no breakfast. During all of this I got a text from Elizabeth Boskey assuring me "Jason is ok. I'm texting you so you can tell everyone else." I had no idea what this meant and called her and she told me what had happened.

Eventually we joined the reception which was at this very authentic, dark, Roman-looking Italian restaurant. Lots of food, LOTS of dancing, two kinds of cake (Randy made red velvet cake which was pretty damn delicious--trust a Southerner to bring the red velvet goods!)--lots of fun. I made the mistake of dancing in my sexy lil' brown strappy shoes, for which the balls of my feet paid the price later on.

I got home and crashed for an hour, and then roused myself to go to the after-party on the East Side. Much the same people, all now dressed casually. We were ALL dragging by this time, and eventually Duncan and I left with Tony who had very kindly offered to let us sleep at his place because Thyme rehearsal was so early the next morning, and so close by. We got one of the new cabs with GPS but the device seemed to be malfunctioning, as it was playing the same new story over and over again. Tony's apartment is beautiful, with an incredible view and a balcony. I'm terribly envious.

Thyme rehearsal the next morning, which went well. I'm *loving* Patricia as Titania--she's really good. Everyone is. After rehearsal I went to the internet cafe again, went home and then slept for four hours.