6 posts tagged “pwm”
It's over?!
Yes, it's over.
I can't possibly summarize the weekend in anything other than bullet points (I'm not sure I can summarize anything in any form other than bullet points anymore).
- We had an unprecedently positive and communicative audience. The number of post-show remarks, hugs, comments, and emails have buoyed me through an exhausting and exhilarating and emotional weekend. I wish I could remember all the kind words but many of them are lost to the excitement of the moment.
- The first night had a respectable audience, the second night very nearly sold out (only maybe...2 seats unclaimed) and the last night had only 10 or 12 empty seats. This is a sight better than our first performance at that theater, over a year ago, when we went out to a house of ... 12 people. The total number of people at that show went up to 20 but dang. In a theater that holds 100+ people, I think we did ourselves proud this time.
- We got our first standing ovation EVER on Friday night. I cried like a big baby in front of 100 people as they all cheered and clapped and stood up and loved us. And then we got our second standing ovation on Saturday.
- I cried during the show, on Friday and Saturday night. It is a rare occasion for me to cry at all, much less in front of a bunch of people when I'm supposed to have my game face on. Maybe there are pictures of me with my big racoon eyes. I guess I need waterproof mascara. Dang.
- It is a special thing to hear people crying in the audience. I've never heard that before, and it made me feel alternately guilty and happy. Mostly it made me cry harder. See above.
- Mom and Dad loved it (so they said, and I believe it). It is amazingly comforting to hear their laughter in the audience.
- It is awkward and scary (and flattering) to have so many people say that this was the best one yet, when we will no longer have the same time, funding and support. Of course we don't want to slip lower, but....
I sent a live picture from the show--I get to fiddle with my cell phone during the pre-show performance and I sent the following not-so-flattering photo over to you, my fellow Voxers:
There is an intense hopefulness, I think, with live performance. It is scary and hard, but there is always the hope that somebody will like what you've done. As much as you want people buying tickets, what you really want is somebody who appreciates the work that's gone into putting a show on for them. One of the best emails I received said:
Congratulations for adding value to the world, making people think, and entertaining us.
That's not so much to ask for, is it?
Thank you to everyone who came to the show, or who cheered me on here at Vox or wished me good luck. Your support and enthusiasm makes the struggle worth it. I hope I can return the favor. I am filled with appreciation and gratitude.
- Oh god I feel like vomiting from nerves. Please don't let me vomit on my workstation.
- Last week we did a leetle radio interview on KFAI. I didn't see him, but the interview before us was Tay Zonday. You know, that Tay Zonday.
- You can listen to our KFAI interview on Fresh Fruit here. If you ever wondered what I sound like, I guess this is the best way to find out. We're at about 34 minutes into the file. (God, it's painful. Actually, maybe you should not listen because I sound like a DUMBASS. It's Embarrassing-Myself-on-the-Internet Thursday!)
- Tech rehearsal on Monday was intense. I hurt myself by...wait for it...hitting myself in the face with a microphone, resulting in a split lip. Yep. Yet another indicator that I am a dancer, not a talker.
- But we finally saw the lights for the show and they are...so beautiful. We didn't really see them, but danced in them and I have never felt so beautiful. We were privileged to have Ben Geffen design our lights, and after seeing the piece twice he seems to have fully absorbed it and then created a beautiful all-white light scheme.
- I had my second Darkness and maybe all my hooting and hollering about it was a bit over-enthusiastic, or maybe I'm just not in a stout mood right now. But it's still a dang good beer.
- I've had so much nervous energy that I was scrubbing my goddang linoleum floor on my hands and knees the other night. It's amazingly clean now--cleaner than it was when we moved in. YES!
- The show opens tonight which means that soon (so soon!) you won't have to hear about it any more.
If you're in Minneapolis:
and
The Survival Pages (Malia Burkhart)
8 p.m.
Thursday pay-what-you-can, Friday and Saturday $12.
Call 612.871.4444 to reserve your seat!
It's almost like having my name in lights:
Some time...I don't know when.. months ago...April? ... we had a photo shoot with Ann Marsden.
It was our very first photo shoot, aside from that time I wore my underwear in our backyard and made a friend take pictures of me with shoes in my mouth. The dance wasn't even remotely close to being real and made, we were still talking ... and talking ... and talking. But we biked over there with about a year's worth of white clothing and ourselves.
We hadn't met Ann yet, but we heard her coming up to her studio from the restaurant below. Her laugh rang out over the landing and up into the hallway where we waited long before her white blonde hair hit the sunlight, her hand bringing a glittering glass of ice water from lunch.
She showed us some photos she'd been working on and talked to us about how we started MKT, where we all came from, etc. We talked longer than we took photographs, and every minute was engaging, with her light blue eyes probing as she leaned forward to listen. I learned a lot about myself from talking with Ann, which is sort of insane considering that I'd never seen her before and I haven't seen her since.
She asked us to get dressed and start dancing, so we did. We probably danced more at that photo shoot than in any other rehearsal for this "dance" of ours. I think of that day often. Ann glowed in her black clothes, cigarette in hand. She seemed to know the unusual nature of our trio--the almost marriage-like bond, the long-term commitment that has arisen out of getting drunk in a basement studio and cracking bad physical comedy jokes--in a way that many others miss. She made this remark about me being the American Dream, because I got an education and am now in a different class than most of the rest of my family, because I escaped the drugs and teen pregnancy and prison that has consumed a lot of my extended family. It startled me, but since then I have been able to focus on how good my life is, how privileged it is and how much my immediate family worked for this bountiful life I have. And gosh, it sounds schmaltzy, but it's true.
Anyway, we finally got our hands on digital copies of the best of the set, so I've thrown them up here. They are so lovely. I feel so vain but it's just amazing having these professional photographs of us.
p.s. Just think, in a little over a week the show will be over and I'll talk about something else, like how depressed I am that the show is over.
It's not all that bad, I guess.
On Saturday night, Paul and I got roped into helping out a family who needed a jump. I say we got roped into it cuz some random guy and his friend stopped us and started blathering about loosened terminals on batteries and Mexicans and... In any case, we went to help. There was a serious language barrier and my life-long Spanish lessons came in real handy. I wish I could say the story ends on a happy note (ah, community within the big city! Friendliness across race and class and gender!), and it sort of does. We managed to jump start the car, and I got to remember that I do speak Spanish and that it is a useful skill.
But the fact remains: these women didn't want the two guys who originally stopped to help them. I can't blame them--two women on a dark street with some strange guy and his friend reaching around under the hood of the car. They were asking me if he was trying to take the battery out, what he was trying to do, and I explained as best I could (I guess I missed the lesson on obscure car parts). But as we were pulling the car over to give them a jump, the two guys were striding off and pissed. Why? They were trying to help out and the damsels-in-distress wouldn't let them, because they were afraid of them.
I don't need to turn around and champion the cause of oppressed men everywhere who can't help out a lady with a car problem. It just reminded me of how fucking complicated it is to live in the world with other people. Premium White Morsels is driving me nuts for the same reason, because it's this hugely complicated situation, distilled into a black box with three performers, and we're pretty picky about how we do what we do. It is frustrating to come to terms with this piece as a failure, but when you set out to change the world and make things Right in just nine months, of course it fails. I still love it and I still want (need) everyone to come see it. But it's not what we had hoped; it's something else entirely. It sort of vaguely resembles the thing we had hoped for. In any case it is bending my brain in halves and quarters and clover-leafs and mobius strips. It is something to behold.
Rehearsals for Premium White Morsels are clicking along. I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that this dance is probably part I in a series of dances about race, class, gender, our place in the world, and how to fix some broken shit. As if we know how to do that.
We've never had this abundant Rehearsal Time. I mean, it's insane. But it's kind of interesting to be able to devote this much time to the product as well as the process.
The secret is getting out: We don't dance that much at rehearsals. Monica and Theresa's roommate Sarah says it is a very weird thing: She sees us at their house all the time, "rehearsing", and we just sit around and talk. And then she gets to the show and shaZAM there is a performance! We talk for weeks, and we brainstorm, and then we rehearse twice and all of a sudden the audience is clapping, I am burping up sausage-flavor and the show is over. So taking this time--about four hours of rehearsal for every nine minutes of dance is unbelievable. It lets us hammer out the little weird things that we normally brush over in our haste to make the piece in the first place. We get to rehearse hard scenes, rework them, chew them over, rework again, etc.
So here's hoping we don't lose all that delicious chaos that makes Mad King Thomas what it is. I don't want polished, I just want it to be right.
---
I know I keep bitching about SO. MUCH. WORK, but...I just totalled up the hours of rehearsal we've done so far. So, between my workaday paying job and my dance job (also paying!) I have worked 67 hours so far this week. And we still have 11+ hours left of rehearsal. So...you know. I wouldn't be surprised if it works out to 80 hours this week.
EIGHTY WORK HOURS IN ONE WEEK. I DO NOT MAKE $100,000. THIS IS STUPID.
And, it's not going to get better until November 13. No wonder I feel like crying all the dang time.
So, here's some ridiculous stock photography about being stressed, since I ain't got no pictures of my own:
