All Kinds of New

Lots of new stuff to tell y'all about. We have new company members, a new board member, a new website and more.

Life's been a bit crazy lately to say the least. I'm slowly but surely starting to get back to my normal self. I tweeted last week that for the first time since Mom got sick, I was starting to get my swagger back. It's kinda funny, but I hadn't realized how much her being sick was affecting me, until I started to feel myself returning. It's almost as if I've been tele-commuting since she was diagnosed in the fall of '08. I didn't realize it until now.

Her passing had been countered with so much exciting and inspiring stuff that some days it felt like I wasn't sure what was up or down.

One thing I did was to rework the website. It looks similar (I hope) with a few tweaks, but everything under the hood is new. Having a rigidly logical project to take on helped me cope with the irrationality of life for a bit. Not avoid it, but balance.

If you subscribe to the feed, you may have gotten some weirdness during the migration, if that's the case, sorry for any inconvenience. I'm still working on migrating the comments from older blog posts, hoping to have that resolved soon.

What do you think of the new digs?

We added more company members and artistic associates. I'm really excited; the amount of talent is pretty insane. New company members are: Barb Anderson, Doug Bowman, Elizabeth Byland, Arch Harmon, Marquetta Jackson,  Arvin Jalandoon, Ed Kuffert, Warren Levon, Andréa Morales (who moved up from being an artistic associate) and Miguel Nuñez.

Erica Hernandez and Derrick York joined the company as artistic associates. And we have a new board member as well Debbie Ruzicka.

Some of the new folks we've known for a while. I directed Warren before Halcyon was around and he was in our first show. Other folks like Derrick are newer to the family and I think we've got a great group of people.

We also kicked off a strategic planning process with the help of the Arts and Business Council of Chicago and three great consultants who are volunteering their time. We had our first workshop session earlier this month (pics are below.)

And to top it off, Greg P's about to get married and Aimee's about to have her second child. (She's due sometime this week.)

The day Mom passed I had to go to the theater to fix a lighting issue. I busied myself with stuff, helping with photo call, running the box office etc. When the lights went down and the show started I wept alone in the dark lobby for about ten minutes. I was able to pull myself together long enough to walk through Lincoln Square, passing by the fountain on the way to the train home.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and it was a bizarre thing to be fighting back tears surrounded by happy families playing all around me. I was there, but not really a part of it. I had withdrawn, it was an odd summation myself for the previous year and a half. But sometimes you don't realize you've been absent until you return.

I'm back. There's a lot of digging out to do, but I'm more inspired than I have been in years.

Anyway, enough about me, how are you?