OK...I'm officially sad...

All Photos feature the cast from Damn Yankees at Arena Stage. This post is RIDDLED with links to all of my rehearsal process posts about the show. Please check them out. This post is a scrapbook of my journey through this amazing time. Enjoy.






Damn Yankees is coming to a close this weekend, and I have to say that I am really getting upset thinking about it.
I am always bad with transitional periods...if I had something to jump into right after, I'd be better, but this time of year is never too generous to me. I think I am gonna have to write to the riddler man, Matthew Lesko to find a grant to pay my taxes this year...ugh.
Anyone got about $2,000 dollars to spend on me?
:)
I have made so many good friends in this show. You form a family with any show that you do. With so many good friends from DC and new friends made from NYC, I feel like I am leaving my family to be poor and not work for awhile. Not a good feeling.
It is so amazing to me that 7 years ago I followed my friend, Kristina Sine around at Arena, (she was the wardrobe girl then), and sat in the smoking greenroom with Marva Hicks, who was then doing Thunder Knocking at the Door, and the first day on set, I walked into the smoking green room, and there sat Marva Hicks, there doing Cutting Up...we fell out. She told me 7 years ago to pursue my dreams and think about DC as a start. Here I am 7 years later, doing pretty well for myself, I'd like to think. It is such a small world.
I look back to the beginning of November, when we started rehearsal...it really has been awhile. I remember all of those mornings of getting up at ass crack to be at warm-up, and then rehearse for 8 additional hours. All the weight I lost. All the stress and exhaustion.
All for good.
The friends I have made and the experience I have had is priceless.
In the Kreeger side of the theatre, there is something spray-paint stenciled onto the shop door. It is a man holding a house that says underneath, "Uniontown". ...Fred Shiffman pointed this out to me....(being a fellow Western PA boy) ...this is the town that is 3 minutes from my house.
Signs are everywhere, if you look for them.
For some reason, I was destined to work in this building.
My next case in point is Parker Esse.
Parker is the Assistant Choreographer(who will be back in town working on Mame at the Kennedy Center with Signature's Eric Schaeffer)...he is such a great guy, and SO great to work with. When he was doing Fosse on the B'way, he always would exchange hellos with a girl selling programs for Chicago that he passed on the way to Fosse. This girl was Jenny Cartney. They reunited the other night. Jenny, as you know, is one of my best friends, and brilliant Music director of Nevermore. He also knew a girl from the age of 5, who happens to be a relatively new employee of Signature, Rachel Applegate...yes, Applegate, and we are doing Damn Yankees...they reunited last night....He also has worked with my much admired friend Karma Camp before...I reunited them...
Signs.
Meg Gillentine ,(Lola in our Damn Yankees),went to High School with my beloved roommate, Ryan Halbrook, (currently understudying Dan Cooney in Nevermore at Signature)...I reunited them...
Signs.
Where does this long experience and work go to when it is done and I am sitting in my living room alone, flipping through TV?
I listed my goals when I went into this rehearsal process. Have I met them??
Yes....I think I have.
I have lost the 13 pounds I wanted to. Want another sign? 13 pounds...I was number 13 in the show. This was my choice, but still...I would like to think that I have become a better dancer through Parker and Baayork's process, and I believe that I have learned many lessons about myself as a performer. Not to be a diva at all, but I usually do more in a show than this...this experience taught me many things...how to have a complete character with no lines...how to justify my presence onstage with no lines to justify myself with. I would like to think that I have done this.
I am proud of my work, and the cast's work, and will be sad to see this grand time end. I dreamt of working at Arena for years...I am so happy to have done so and had a great time along the way. I hope this is one of many to come for me...
In the meanwhile, it's hard and cheap living for awhile, till I am back at my artistic home, Signature Theatre, doing 2 in a row of musical theatre's master composer. And 2 with my husband in them too...wow....I'll get to see him. Nifty concept.
SO...9 weeks of nothing, then Assasins and Into the Woods...I am so ready.
I have about 5 more pounds to lose, and some muscle to build. Another goal. Oh....and the biggest one....I am trying to quit smoking starting Monday. This will be the hardest challenge of all. I will keep everyone posted on this blog as to my progress. I will be trying, and for the first time, for myself...
Colors of purple and blue bathe me in melancholy tonight. Sorry.
Combination of Eleasha and the show ending....and being poor again. We Cancers HATE transition.
:)