The Play's the Thing

I tried out a bereavement group yesterday. It went really well. As well as bereavement groups can go, I guess. Still, if there were a pedometer on my heart, it would have read well over 10,000 steps. I came home and did this:

Today I'm doing this:

because I feel guilty when I go up to my room and put a pillow over my head. I mean, my mom spends a lot of time in her room, and I think I should be around when she comes out. From this vantage point, I can see her immediately if she heads for the kitchen, so it's a chance to check in. I have a lap desk that makes it kind of comfortable to lie on my back and write. So yeah, here I am, flattened by I don't know what. I'm not actually sick, just...flattened.

I had an actor's nightmare last night although it's been years since I performed in a play.

I missed my entrance and heard the actors on stage making up lines and re-cuing me. I entered in my underwear instead of my costume and began improvising. It was sort of a plot to cover up my mistake  because it was my fault that I'd missed my entrance, but I wanted to make up an excuse about a stuck zipper in my costume. So we improved and got the scene back on track, all the while the three of us on stage were eyeballing one another with that actors' panic. When I exited I didn't have long backstage before my next entrance and I was so rattled that I really needed to look at a script so I could read over the next scene. I asked everyone if they had a copy and no one did. "I really need to see the scene in print before I go out there," I said. "I have to see it on paper." I said that over and over again to everyone, but all the other actors were off book and no one could help me.

At the end of yoga this morning, as I lay on the floor in savasana, it occurred to me that yeah, I would really love a glimpse of the next big scene in real life. What to say. Who'll be there. Do I stand, or sit on a pretty chair, or lie on the floor in a heap? What does my costume look like? Do I have any props? Is the play a tragedy or a comedy? Anyone? Does anyone have a copy of the script? I just need to see the words in print. I need to see it on paper. I promise I'll get up.  I won't miss my entrance.

Report from Pillville...as delivered by a dream...with a tightrope and a hamster

Dream:

I'm in some kind of improv performance. But not as a professional. I'm a volunteer from the audience. It seems that the point is to select a group from the audience, and then after an orientation with the director, we perform.

The performance space is car wash/gas station. One of those big places with a lot of things for sale so they can triple the cost of what you pay for the car wash when you shop while you wait. They have a little bit of everything, and since we are supposed to use what's in our environment as fodder for the improv, I  hurriedly note the possibilities. There's pet food and greeting cards and car stuff and some minor hardware type stuff. 

The only really interesting thing is a novelty entertainment that consists of a tightrope that runs around the perimeter of the room at ceiling height. Along the tight rope is a variety of characters that either bicycle, unicycle, or walk in perpetual motion around and around above our heads. I'm panicking, trying to think of something clever or some funny way to incorporate this. I'm not really able to hear or focus on what the director is saying. 

To add to the confusion, the audience who had already been seated on folding chairs in a sizable empty section of the room, is now being asked to file out for a few moments so we "actors" can finish our rehearsal/orientation with the director. The audience is annoyed and I am annoyed that there's all this milling around with people talking. I'm grumbling to myself about what a stupid arrangement it all is. Why have the audience come in and gotten comfortable if we now have to chase them out so we can rehearse or whatever you call what we're doing. 

The place looks different when they're gone. There's a big garage door visible now. Maybe it leads to some kind of service bay where they change oil or put your car on a hoist to clean the underside. These big doors have opaque glass in them and through them a glowing  light is visible. It's the only attractive part of the room. Better than the kitschy tightrope. Better than any of the product displays. These squares of light seem to promise that there's something on the other side. Was the director saying something about the doors? I couldn't really hear her. I don't know what she expects of us. I'm nervous. The audience will be returning, and I want to come up with something clever so I began to work on some kind of line where I say something like,"Oh look (pointing to the tightrope and it's characters circling overhead) don't you think our pet hamster would like that? He could run along the tightrope with them!" I don't think the line is very good, even though it does kind of follow the instruction of utilizing the environment.  I have a sinking feeling. This is going to be awkward.

And now for my improvisational interpretation. Here's the tightrope: the hearing loop--which in a home installation can run around the edges of the room at ceiling height. In the dream, I'm my mother--confused, unable to understand because I can't hear. Yesterday the guy from Caption Call came to our house with the new FTC (you'd think we were about to breach national security with her close-captioned phone) paperwork. I was telling him how difficult it is for my mom to hear--that the hearing aids don't help much, that the captioning on the phone is slow and not always accurate. He told us about the hearing loop technology, and about a smart phone app called TalkTranslate. 

The timeline is too short to get my kitchen, living room and dining room looped before Thanksgiving--darn, but I'm hoping for a little help from TalkTranslate so my mom can enjoy the party. This looping thing seems affordable and simple. It's quite widely used in public spaces in Great Britain and Scandinavia, the Internet says. Sounds like a miracle. Anybody out there ever heard of it?

As for the hamster, there's this....

Actor's Nightmare in Margaritaville

I've been dragging around Margaritaville recently feeling as though someone has stolen my tequila and taken an ax to my blender. Stuck in some kind of negativity hangover, I haven't had much luck at clearing my head. But my fiesta of funk might be leading me somewhere. I'm so fucking bored, I said to myself last night, what I need is a week of theatre-going in New York--like the old days. Of course there's no chance of my getting away now that my mom lives with me. The self-pity danced me around a bit, and then the thought occurred to me: I'm in the wrong play.

I am living the classic actor's nightmare. If you've ever been on stage, you probably know what I mean. It's the week before the show opens or maybe the first week of the run, and you wake panting like a racehorse because in your dream where you're waiting to go on as one of the witches in "MacBeth," you see through an opening in the scenery that your fellow actors are in the deep south, drawling out Tennessee Williams lines on a vine choked veranda. That desolate heath that you're dressed for was last week's play. Or maybe the play is right, and you're there in some overstuffed drawing room with your frilly cuffs, your accent just right, the lynchpin dramatic moment about to occur when the book shelves topple and the lights crash down from above splintering at your feet.

I see life's problems as something meant to be solved. I've raised children, managed a chaotic household, kept the home fires burning behind a husband with a high-powered career. A child with a lisp? Speech therapy. Crooked teeth? Orthodonture. Entertain the new partner? Sure. Roof leaking? Get it fixed. While it would be a ridiculous revision of history to say I managed all of these things gracefully, I did them. I fixed what needed to be fixed, did what needed to be done or at least tried my damnedest, perhaps going wrong (sometimes repeatedly) before choosing a solution that provided at least some relief.

So here I am in the fix-it play, chauffeuring my mother from one specialist to another. Googling into the wee hours to ascertain if it's one of her medications that makes her groan constantly, of if there's a diet to improve circulation or prevent flatulence. I've gotten her new shoes, new hearing aids, a cane, a this, and a that. But there's no fixing what she's got. She's old. She's not going to wake up tomorrow and be 70 again. Or even 80. I am in the wrong play.

And worse yet, there is no play. No script. No stage directions. It's improv. All improv. All the time. With a sad ending. I suck at that.