Tony Jr. has been needing a raincoat and boots for a while, especially now that we walk to preschool three times a week... He only has one pair of sneakers, and I think it would be pretty awful for him to spend the day at school with wet clothes and shoes!

Here's the problem..raincoats are expensive, and it is off-season. I went to Salvation Army and Village Discount several times and found nothing. I did a lot of looking on the web and found some for $28, but by the time you add in tax and shipping it gets close to $40. We don't have a lot of money, so that seemed like a stretch.

Target has raincoats for $28, and I could just take the bus to buy it. But Target has made some pretty bad choices lately... My good friend Coya Paz has a website that details her letters to Target that is hilarious and poignant. If you have some time you should check it out.

I have been environmentally aware and concerned since high school, but I have never been a political person until the last few years. I never boycotted, always voted democrat w/o really paying attention to the issues; I honestly never really felt like my voice would make a difference anyway, so it was silly to upset my life over it. Sounds trite, but that's honest.

Now that I AM more aware, sometimes it becomes a difficult issue for another reason. Now that we have a family, we are always watching the dollar. Let's face it. Wal-mart and Target ARE cheaper. Wal-mart has had questionable practices for a long time. They are also not allowed in Chicago City Limits (I wonder how that will change once Daley is no longer Mayor...) However, when we were in Texas the last two years for Christmas, we bought all of our Christmas presents there because the other choice was to travel an hour to the mall and spend twice as much...

We have been staying away from Target, but we wanted to get Tony Jr a bike for his birthday and couldn't find any where else in Chicago we could get one for $50, so we bought it there...

Last night I went to Village Discount again, Sears, called Toys R Us and they had none... I went into Enjoy, an Urban General Store in Lincoln Square and they had two choices in Tony's size for $36. With tax it would be $39. I called Tony.

"It's $12 for your conscience." I bought the raincoat.

I have started seeing the same thing in theatre, now that I am friends with artists who are also activists. Some of my friends won't attend plays that don't have any artists of color working on the project. Some won't attend or work on projects with violence or nudity. Some actors won't swear. On the other hand, one person's bad politics is another person's "no big deal."

I still wrestle with where my line is. Most of the time I think that nudity onstage is unnecessary. Even when it seems integral, I feel like it could just as easily be done without it. There was a theatre group a few years back who did a play where at the end the actor came out naked with a mirror held up to the audience... I understand the message, I just think it could have been achieved another way. But I don't boycott, I just say "Well, that boob/penis wasn't needed." In the case of Angels in America or a play I saw in college called Purple Breasts, which was about breast cancer, it would be hard to see it without the nudity. Someone else may disagree.

If a playwright wrote a play whose message was that the Gulf spill wasn't a big deal or how the Holocaust didn't really happen, I can respect their right to write it, but I wouldn't go and support it. I don't wear clothes with labels promoting the store I bought it from because I can't be a part of that level of commercialism. I have a lot of friends who are gay, and a growing amount of friends who are immigrants or are descendants of immigrants, and I hate how hurtful and suffocating closed-mindedness can be...

...but I would probably have gone to Target last night so my kid didn't spend the day wet at school today, if Tony hadn't reminded me that it really was $12 for my conscience." Is that where my line is?
 

So many times when I was upset at my last job, people would say “Just keep your mind on your babies.” I know they meant well, but for a very specific reason it always made me angry...

They never mentioned my husband.

My kids are super-important to me, don’t get me wrong, but my husband is equally, if not more, important. Without our marriage, there would BE no children, and I plan to be with him still when they are grown and off in their own romantical adventures.

Both Tony’s and my parents had long-term marriages, but I don’t think I’d call either of them healthy, and they both ended in divorce. We don’t have a lot of role models out there for good and healthy marriages, especially in the arts. Sometimes it even feels like it’s a race among artists to see whose marriage can end faster or who will cheat first. And I can’t just call up Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward to see how they did it...

Also, it was astounding to me how once we had children, Tony’s presence seemed to become less important to those who were visiting us or talking to us about the kids. He joked about it, but I can only imagine how much it bothered him not to be considered important when it came to conversations about his children and his family. To be treated like a by-product or a stander-by. I made a conscious decision then to always make sure that Tony was part of the equation when I spoke... not “my/our children” but “my marriage and my children” or “my husband and my children.”

It seems weird to have to “make it a priority to make it a priority.” However, especially with the day jobs and children AND the theatre company, I think it becomes even more of a necessity. There seems to be so little time to devote to each other, once all the other pieces of life get a cut...date nights are the first thing to go because of the cost, and we seamlessly navigate towards conversations about the theatre company, which can end up feeling like “shop talk.”

It’s also easy to slip into thinking “my husband/wife can take care of themselves. My children need me for survival.” But I can’t think of many worse feelings then not being needed. And I may not need Tony to feed me, but my soul needs feeding in a way which my children can’t do and which I can’t do myself; I hope the same is true for him. That’s part of why I wanted to marry him.

There is a line in a movie called Playing by Heart that resonates with me and which helps me to realise how easily two people who are genuinely in love can begin to lose touch with each other- “I knew why I loved you... but I forgot what it was that made you love me.” Because of that, I like to look at him sometimes when he’s not looking, and see something that reminds me of a moment when we were first dating. I remind myself to say thank you; I remind myself to compliment him; I remind myself to make him a priority. Because the longer you are married, the easier it is to take it for granted; to assume; to forget. Without even realizing it’s happening.

Marriage is hard work, and deserves just as much time as raising children. It shouldn’t be HARD work, but I think you always have to keep it in the front of your mind and not let it become a by-product of your life or lower on the totem pole than your children, your day jobs, or your passion...I think it is important to realize how easy it can be for either party to feel neglected or unnecessary, especially during times like tech weeks when you can be away from home so much and have such a strong outside focus...but I believed that the person I married was the most important person in my life when I married him, and I promised to be with him for life...isn’t it worth it to make sure he stays that way?

I have been working with Coya Paz on a piece she is creating, and Halcyon is putting a workshop production of it up at the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival in two weeks. It’s exciting for me, because I have never been a part of creating something from scratch before. Called The Americans, it takes a critical look at...well, what it is to be an American. It runs about 30 minutes, and it touches on the stereotypes and the realities, immigration and entitlement. It talks a lot about “Home.”

Most of the process so far has been the group of us getting together and talking about ourselves, our views of America and Americans, what it means to BE an American and what it means to be IN America. It has been amazing to me to watch as, from that, Coya has culled a script. It has opened a lot of dialogue, but also led me to a lot of questions.

It was crazy at the first rehearsal to learn that while all of us in the process are Americans, from varied backgrounds, we all either feel like we have our feet in two or more homes, or never felt like we had a place we called home.

There are definitely times in rehearsal where I feel like the minority, which admittedly is a pretty strange feeling. I was born here and I’m not of recent immigrant decent; my parents aren’t biracial and my heritage is strictly European, as far as I know. I have never felt a strong connection to being “American” because I moved around a lot as a kid and I have never felt like I identify with “mainstream America.” However, in rehearsal I felt very aware that when we brought up issues about Americans, what we were talking about was “White” America... aka...me.

Some of the less positive terms thrown out there: lazy, entitled, racist, punctual, wanting to control others...I never felt guilty about being white, I just never felt like it was part of what defined me as a person. The same thing held true for being American. To me, the people who felt like it DID define them were the people I didn’t want to associate myself with- racists, extremists, militiamen, conservatives... To that end, I have never before felt an impulse to defend my whiteness, or explore it for that matter, but now I did. I wanted to say “Hey, I’m American and I’m not like that.” I also had the urge to try and examine WHY some Americans have those characteristics. Which of course led me to have fears of sounding racist, seeming racist, being racist...

But that is one of the things we are talking about in this piece... No matter what your background, it seems like Americans who are not on the fringe, e.g. Tea Party members, often have a desire to disown their American-ness... It feels like having national pride means that you are a Militia member, especially after Waco and Oklahoma City. We say “Those Americans,” when we are all Americans. If you were born here, you are American. If you have citizenship, you are American. If you are here long-term, this is your America and you deserve to have your voice represented and heard.

If you are here illegally... I don’t know. It’s such a complex issue. I definitely don’t have any answers, I really just have a lot of questions... I completely understand the desire, the need, to come here and hope to provide a better life for yourself, your children, or your family in another country. I understand that undocumented workers are doing jobs that Americans won’t often do. I can’t imagine living in fear that you will be sent away from what has become your home. How do I ignore the voice inside me that says “If my family was in danger, I would do whatever necessary to get them out of danger.” How do I, as a human being who believes that the best part of any religion is the part that states you must respect and help your fellow man, not allow someone to do what they need to do feed their family or escape persecution?

But if you come here illegally, than you are breaking the law, right? If I am a law-abiding person, how do I ignore that? If someone asks to come into my house and I say no and they come in anyway, it is called trespassing and I call the cops. Is it different if I replace the word "house" with the word "country?"  If businesses can hire undocumented workers for less money and line their pockets with the money they SHOULD be paying workers, how do we get them to not exploit that and thereby exploit the workers and the people who can't afford to apply for those jobs? If they can offer less pay because undocumented workers will take less, which may mean that legal Americans don’t get the job or can’t take the job at that wage, doesn’t that just hurt everybody? How do we make sure we can take care of ourselves in addition to immigrants, legal or not, who are just looking for a better life or a way to better take care of their families?

I don’t know what the answer is. And I have to admit it’s scary to even open up the dialogue...All I can hope is that we all continue to ask questions, not yell answers. 

There are shows you do that you enjoy, there are shows that are your favorites, and then there are shows that change who you are as a person. When I was in high school, I did two shows that changed who I am to this day. 

One was a musical called EARTHLINGS! that took each letter of the word ECOLOGY and created a story about what happens to the earth if you are not good to it. I am hoping that once Halcyon starts doing shows for kids, it will be something that we do. There was a story about a king who loves the sea and fishes and who learns about polution, there was a sketch about a girl whose boyfriend writes all over the walls about his other girlfriends (not the best of the bunch, but I got to sing about seeing "the handwriting on the wall" so that was fun...)

EARTHLINGS! toured schools, and I did it for two years. The cast was entirely kids, from age 5 to however old I was at the time...I was an original member. The show was not without its drama for me, drama that still stings a bit all these years later... 

My junior year, I was fired from a high school show at dress rehearsal- I was SERIOUSLY sick and my mother called my high school drama teacher to say she was making me stay home. Then I called the EARTHLINGS! director to say I was sick, and could my understudy do the shows. She told me that one school of the schools we were performing at that day was that of a cast member. The director told me the cast member, who was probably 7 at the time, had been waiting for two years for us to do her school. She said if I didn't do it, we would have to cancel because my understudy hadn't been rehearsed. I didn't understand, because my understudy had performed for me, but I went. My high school director thought I had made my mother lie to him so I could do the touring shows, and fired me.

When I was about to graduate, EARTHLINGS! was asked to perform at the State Capitol. It was the same day as my Senior Banquet. I chose to go to my Banquet... I have never regretted that, I had a great time... but later when the show was asked to perform at The Kennedy Center, I was not invited to perform with the group. I was "too old to be in the cast." So, there you go.

Those things affected me, but when I think about the show, what I think about most is how it changed my respect for the earth. I remember the time we went to Burger King after a show, and one of the cast members threw his bag of trash out the window. The director turned the van around and made him get out and pick it up. "What if one of the kids we just shared our story with saw you do that? How would that affect the way THEY think about the world and what we told them?" 

I don't litter. And I call out people who do. The reason I am thinking about this at all is because when I was on the street the other day, this middle-aged man threw his empty water bottle in the grass. I get mad when Tony chides people for riding their bike on the sidewalk or not letting a pregnant woman have a seat on the bus, but I lit INTO this man and made him pick it up. I have given a lollipop wrapper to a kid whose mom threw it on the ground and said "I think your mom dropped this." It may sound bitchy, but I'm sorry- If you don't teach your child not to litter, it is your child that is going to have to clean up your messy planet. And sometimes your child is the only one who can show you that your doing something wrong.

Another show I was involved with that changed who I am as a person and an artist was (don't cringe) Godspell. I know, I know... clowns, right? But... not if it's done right. And I think the one I did was done right. It's a series of parables based on the Gospel of Matthew. It was also in high school, same director, and was the first time that I was involved in a process that used acting exercises as ensemble building. It was the first time I really understood  that the subtext of a dramatic situation is so much more than the words on the page. I did not grow up with a religious or spiritual outlet. My dad is an atheist, and it was embarrassing for me to admit that I might believe in God; that I wanted to feel like I belonged when I went to church. 

I did Godspell with a group of very spiritual and religious people; different sects, but people who believed in and/or were searching for, a higher power and a higher force of good. For two hours, we were allowed to believe that we COULD BE disciples in the presence of Jesus- a man who was trying to teach us to live a better way. We were allowed to embrace the joy of his love and the guilt and pain of his death and our part in that death. The audience was allowed to relate what we were experiencing onstage to their own lives- to the stories they believed in, to their search for belonging, for a higher power, or to feel okay with NOT understanding. 

There was a woman who came to see the show who had a puppet theatre company in Moscow. She was so moved by what we did that she invited us to come to Russia as part of a cultural exchange. From what I remember (it was quite a while ago) she was excited about the fact that being able to discuss religion was relatively new for her people, and she wanted people to be able to experience the power of what we had done. I decided to defer going to college for a year to take advantage of that opportunity, and was able to perform again the next year. That was 1991, and then the USSR toppled, so we ended up not being able to go, but it still changed my life and who I am.

I'm not saying that doing Godspell made me a saint. I am still searching for what I believe in. I still struggle with whether or not I believe in the Jesus that rose from the dead after 3 days in a cave. But I don't struggle with what that sense of community feels like, and why it can be so powerful to believe. Every show I direct, I try to instill that same sense of ensemble. I try to empower the artists involved to believe, and to let them feel empowered to embrace the message that we are trying to give the audience. Doing Godspell did that for me.

I'm not saying that doing EARTHLINGS! made me an saint. I try not to waste water, but I really love long showers... My love wins out some of the time, (admittedly less often now that I have kids) But I try to counterbalance by saving water in other ways. (and sometimes I DO feel like a hypocrite about that, but there's no one to hand the water back to me like with the garbage.) I try to think about my relationship to this planet, and what I can do to make it better, more beautiful and healthy, and sustained. I try to teach my kids how to treat their earth with love. 

Theatre did that. Theatre that means something. Theatre made a difference in who I am as a person. It has that power. What you perform affects the people who see it. And if it does what it should, it affects you too. You are responsible for that relationship, and hopefully the affect is long-lasting. 

Have you done or seen or seen any shows that you felt changed you as a person?

My name is Jennifer Adams, and I am a theatre-o-holic. A Lifer. I started doing theatre when I was five, and when as a 2nd grader I got the role of the narrator in The Little Red Hen because I liked to talk, and improvised during the performance to great acclaim when a kid forgot his lines, I was hooked for life. My whole life growing up revolved around theatre, and it is only now, in my mid-and-growing thirties that I have something in my life that means as much to me as theatre always has. I live a life full of learning to balance, sometimes by taking wicked dives and getting the hugest bumps and scrapes that life can give...

I was born in Kittery, Maine., in a hospital that straddles state lines, but we moved around New England every year or two growing up. Every place was different, and I feel like it really helped shape who I am and how I see the world.

Kittery was pretty diverse. I lived there as a youngun, and my best friends were from a very traditional Greek family and an interracial family being raised by a single vegan mom... The friend from the latter family went on to compete in the Winter Olympics one year, skiing for the Virgin Islands.

My great-grandmother's house was in rural Eliot, Maine. It was a gorgeous farmhouse that someday I would love to buy.

Hamlet Green in Windsor, Ct., was a 3-mile long apartment complex that was 75% african-american. We lived next door to a family from africa and down the street from a gay couple, both of whom were good friends of the family and babysat me often. Then I moved to Concord, NH., which was rich and snobby and I never fit in. I did get to be in a musical called No, No, A Million Times No, where I played the femme fatale that sang "I am a flame around which moths will flutter. Men are my game, their daily lives I clutter." As a 6th grader. I knocked it out of the park. Yes I did.

In 7th grade, we moved to Steep Falls Village, Me. We had a house on a dead end street, and through the woods behind my house were the railroad tracks that led to the Corner Store that all the "Bad" teenagers hung out at. I could walk a mile to the river and sit there for hours.

My mom stayed home with us growing up. Now that I stay home with my kids I appreciate her more and more every day. My strongest images of her are playing the piano, both alone and while my sister and I sang, and dancing beside me in the modern dance troupe we were part of.

My strongest image of my dad is of him running past our house in 100 degree weather after a 6 or 8 mile run. He would run when it was toughest to run and would push himself harder because of it.

I have one sister who is 6 years younger than me. She is opposite from me in every way and we have never had a fight. She has a baby girl that is 6 weeks younger than my daughter, but because she lives in Maine I don't get to see them much. I hate that.

I played the flute and guitar, and did theatre and sang all through high school. Everyone thought I was easy, but the truth was I was scared of boys. Sometimes I "had rehearsal" so I wouldn't have to go to a party and play Spin the Bottle.

The community theatre in the next town changed my life, but also made me choose more often then I should have had to as a high schooler. It kept me out of trouble, and taught me about loving theatre and working your butt off for theatre. It taught me how valuable it can be to do theatre with your family and how sometimes your theatre friends ARE your family. I had the opportunity through that theatre to do a show for 2.5 years that toured schools teaching kids about ecology and taking care of our earth. It was one of the best things I have ever done. It also taught me that your life and theatre extend WAY beyond high school. If you have to choose between family and theatre you should choose family every time. Don't be afraid to make a choice that is going to make someone else angry, and if you get fired from a show (or are told you must choose between two because they share a week of rehearsal time) when you are 16, your life is not over. And if you have an opportunity to make out in the dance room, take it!

I spent six-ish years in college studying theatre, graduated and spent a year touring children's theatre up and down the East Coast and all throughout the Gulf region and Texas. It was pretty incredible to see that much of the country. It taught me that our school systems are horribly unequal, women with black hair should NEVER wear blond wigs, you should never do Alice in Wonderland THAT hung over, and that everyone in this country should be learning to speak Spanish. It can only make you a BETTER person.

Then I moved to Chicago. I worked at O'Donovan's Restaurant for 3.5 years as a bartender and waitress. I learned how it felt to be sexy and confident. I then worked at a religious institution for 7.5 years. I learned a lot about how real offices are NOT run; I learned Excel; I started as a receptionist, became Assistant to the Executive Director, Facilities Coordinator, Event Planner, learned how to do layout on a bulletin, send weekly emails and maintain the website, and in the end was forced to sit back at the Receptionist Desk because it was important to have a friendly face there, and when I quit they did not make anyone else move down there. I worked directly under 3 consecutive Executive Directors, 3 consecutive Membership Directors, and indirectly under 3 consecutive Directors of Development. I left there to concentrate on Halcyon and stay home with the kids. And to stop my head from spinning.

I founded 2 theatre companies here in Chicago, including Halcyon. The first was devoted to the artists, and making sure the artists had a great process. It was a very noble goal for a small and specific group, but looking back I feel like we left a very important part, the audience, out of the equation. I am infinitely proud that with Halcyon, I am learning to take the time to really learn who our audience is and what our audience receives from seeing what we do. I hope that will make our process with artists better as well, and I believe it helps us use theatre to make the world a better place as opposed to making one process a better place.

I have an amazing husband (who you have met or will meet), who was VERY worth the wait, and we have 2 beautiful and high-energy children under age 4 who remind us every day why we must continue to do what we love.

My life is...continuously...VERY hard to balance. Physical balance always came easy to me. With this kind of balance I always feel like I'm on the long side of the learning curve. I was told in high school that I was a Theatre Girl... a Lifer. Almost every memory I have growing up involves theatre, dance, or music. My sign is Cancer which makes me a nurturer and a natural mother. I started wanting kids when I was 28, and it was the first thing I blurted out when Tony asked me what I wanted one night when we were dating. I wouldn't give either up, nor would I give up being a wife... but I am learning to look as far into the future as I can see into the past in order to see how the balancing scales will even out. It's hard, but when I look back at my life at age 90, I want my children's children to know who I REALLY was. All 360 degrees. Not just a sliver of the pie.
 

I remember, at some point, deciding that being a mother makes you a better actor. I started to believe this in my 20's, before I became a mother myself, and before I became brilliant enough to stop making broad general statements. I thought it was something to do with being pregnant and having life grow inside you.

I have grown and matured, of course, but I have to admit that I still think that being a parent CAN make you a better actor.

There are 2 main reasons for this: Loss of Self-Importance and Tactics

When you love, you hopefully put your loved ones first. Whether it be your love of family members, friends or significant other, when you love completely you do at times put the best interest of those people ahead of your own. However, you CAN choose to put yourself first, and if you do choose to put yourself first, your adult loved ones have coping mechanisms that allow them to move on. You have a safety net for self-interest, as they are adults and can take care of themselves. If you put your own needs ahead of your children's, they have no coping mechanism. They could die. It takes away your safety net.

As an actor, I really believe that putting the focus on your scene partner makes the scene stronger, raises the stakes, and allows you to be MORE invested, MORE specific and MORE engaged than if you are approaching the scene thinking solely of your own environment, mood, etc...  There is something very grounding in putting your attention on the other person, and I believe this can become intrinsic to who YOU are when you are a parent;if you allow your own experiences to be a base for your character work, I believe you automatically have a deeper well to draw on and a more mature approach and presence.

Instead of "I want ______" your focus should be "How am I going to get ______ from YOU?" You need to listen to how your actions impact your partner in order to be able to proceed with the best chance of winning. "I just did ____. Did it work? Are you doing what I want/listening to me/leaving? If not, I need to change my approach and try something different."

This leads right into tactics.

I learned about Tactics in college.

"Tactics are the strategies of human communication; they are the active ingredients of dynamic interaction... Some tactics are used to seek the support of other characters; some to silence their opposition..." Acting One, Robert Cohen (I laughed at the book's ridiculousness as I re-read it for this post, but it IS meant to teach BEGINNING skills to BEGINNING actors, and can have something to offer in a classroom setting).

My acting teachers were ALWAYS talking about tactics. and I took the same approach to that as I took to everything else... "I GET it... now can we please just ACT???" When we were given the task of writing tactics in the margins of our scripts, I thought it was my job to have the most interesting verbs, not the ones that would work the best- instead of using "My goal is 'To hurt you' with this line" I would use "My goal is 'To slash your wrists with my words' with this line." I have always had a flair for the dramatic. My teacher was not amused. Another example was when it was suggested that using colored pencils to delineate when we were using different tactics in our scripts. Yeah, I did it, but I had no idea how it was really supposed to help me be an actor.

It wasn't until I took classes here in Chicago that I truly and intrinsically got it. I took classes with Kurt Naebig at The Audition Studio, now called Acting Studio Chicago. I think it is THE best place to hone your craft here in Chicago, and I think Kurt is one of the best teachers around. For me, Michael Shurtleff's 12 Guideposts take the best of many different strategies of acting (Uta Hagen, Viewpoints, Checkov, Meisner, etc) and give them a base that is easy to understand and activate and make actionable.

Guidepost 2: Conflict
What is my dream and what can I do to my partner so that this person can make my dream come true today? Your "Fighting For" is done in a variety of ways, which are called Actions. An Action is described as an undeniable communication that affects or changes your partner to get what you want. The best actions are physical, because they are undeniable. Some examples of actions: to berate, to infuriate, to surprise, to tease etc, etc. Name the action, then play the action.

Action=Tactic=Action: It is HOW you do what you do to the other to get what you want.

As a parent, your world is STEEPED in tactics... you excite, you tease, you threaten, you punish, cajole, lead, scare, inspire.... and that is all just to get them to eat their breakfast!
And you have to be watching and listening constantly to see if your tactics are working... and be prepared to change tactics in a split-second when they don't. The results of NOT doing this can run anywhere from always having to pick up the toys yourself to becoming a Screaming Shrew that isn't fun for ANYONE (and that noone listens too after a while) to your child drinking his own pee to your child running in front of a train... (these last two are, of course, hypothetical only. Because of TACTICS!)

Now, as I said, I have matured. I know many people without children, younger and older, who are fantastic actors, and I know parents who are not. Hopefully, my broad sweeping statements have gone the way of the color-blocked shirt and parachute pants. However, I do believe that calling on your own experiences makes you a better actor, and being a parent can give you an intrinsic understanding of using tactics and focusing on the characters you are using those tactics ON that makes you a more grounded actor.
 

I really did it. I quit my job. I am a Stay-at-Home Mom...I'm sorry to harp on it, but I have to keep reminding myself that this is a life change and not a temporary situation...

No matter what you think, when you have children, you are plucked up from the life you have and transported into another life. It's a great life, but it's different. No doubt about it. Especially in a time where we live with our spouse before we marry them so the change from dating to marriage is not as great as it once was...

Every day I play a balancing act. I balance my attention for each of my children and the one I take care of, I balance cleaning to keep my sanity with a few moments of rest to keep my sanity, and I balance the wish for a moment of rest with the fact that I have been doing theatre since I was five and for most of my life it was my greatest love, and I have limited time during the day to accomplish my theatre work. (gasp, gasp, gasp... that was a really long sentence...)

There are days when all I can think about is theatre. There are days where I struggle to remember why I love it. When I have 1/2 hour to myself while younger kids are napping, why am I spending it calling businesses about doing classes in exchange for parking spots when I could be watching Ellen Degeneres?

I struggle with the difference between what I love about theatre and what Tony loves, and I struggle to maintain my theatre identity when sometimes it seems easier to simply support what he wants to do since he seems to have more time to think about it.

I know what I love about theatre. I love the sense of purpose that it can give, the feeling of being a part of something greater; I love the feeling you get when you reach into a place you didn't know you had and you take the audience with you. I love the sense of community it can build, and the way it can teach you about something you never would have known about otherwise.

I love that it can become the most important thing in a kids life and keep them motivated when schoolwork and Nintendo can't (dating myself, I know.,.. what is it now? Playstation 7000?) I love that you are giving something of yourself to people who have never met you, and when they leave and you leave, you are both changed somehow... Actually, Manual for a Desperate Crossing pretty much embodies what I love about theatre. Go see it; it's really fantastic.

Some days it's hard, I'm not gonna lie; whose life isn't hard sometimes? But when I am being tackled, when peas are being thrown at me, OR when I am called the best mommy in the world, I have to remind myself what my whole life has been working towards- having theatre be a part of everything I do. THAT is what brings this insanely chaotic existence into balance. And that's when I know that even though sometimes I feel incredibly fragmented, I am just watering, feeding and growing all the different and separate parts of my being so that one day I can bring them all together again. It has started already. Tony, Jr. doesn't say "Mommy..." or "Daddy..." are "gone." He says we're "at the theatre." He talks about lights and calls his toys actors... Our kids will understand that we work incredibly hard to be great parents AND keep our identities. And we will look back and remember "we would never be where we are today if we hadn't worked so INSANELY hard back then." Maybe cervezas and beaches will be involved as we share this conversation, Tony and I... or maybe it will be at the 25th anniversary of Halcyon House...I can't wait to find out! 

During rehearsal today, it became apparent to me and my cast that there was no way that Tango Palace could go up safely on two weeks rehearsal. So it will not be part of the festival.

There were so many elements that were not going to be able to be addressed in such short notice. Swords, heels, a reenacted bull fight and that's just a start. Though we tried to recast and get it up to speed, it ended up not being possible on that time frame.

There are times when a show is just too much to take on, and it was just not going to be safe for anyone, physically or mentally, to continue pushing ourselves to "get it done."

"Get it done" should have been the first indication... it always seemed to be a battle between "Give it your all" and "Get it done."

What would happen if we were able to give all of our shows the chance to really bloom BEFORE we show them to people? What would happen if we always knew when to say "Enough."

In the words of María Irene Fornés, "You must relinquish what you want, or you will never have it."

The other five shows in the festival I think are going to be incredible. I'm excited to see them, and hope to see you there.