It’s Monday and I’m on my weekend.  The show is open and I am back in Chicago.  I slept till 3 today, believe it.  Which means I sacrificed several to-do list activities today in the name of rejuvenation.  But it’s a happy time, no doubt, as that show I’m in has turned out pretty good, and I feel okay about my work in it so far.

(By the way, hooray to everybody for getting through that conveniently-timed storm!  I never want to have to spend the night on the Milwaukee Shakespeare green room couch again!)

So yeah, after 24 hours away from the show (though I did spend dinner hour last night prepping scenes for upcoming Cymbeline workshops, hi Rufus King), tonight I’m busting out my script to keep working on Posthumus lines for understudy rehearsal(s) this week.  It’ll be different to not have Wayne one floor above me saying them through a monitor.  For someone who’s always carrying his script around (sometimes actually looking at it!) it’s a long time out of contact with the material.

But having this much time off reminds me how out of contact I get from so much of my life on a run-up to an opening.  Giving family, loved friends, clerical duties and general cleanliness daily attention at these times is of the question.  The sheer hours you’re required to be at the theatre combined with the level of focus required to prepare mean that for me at least,  some things are gonna slip away from you.   My brain becomes momentarily disconnected from people I care so much about and from the small actions that maintaining a lifestyle necessitates. (Don’t worry, moms, I’m eating.  I swear.)

But they’re a pleasure to come back to then.  Great long talks with those friends on the phone I’ve been ignoring.  The pile of clothes is folded with a jaunty whistle, or in my case, beat-box routine.  Rounding my life back into order after the play becomes, necessarily, an obsession.  The perspective of friends, the rest, the meditative hours, bring balance back.  Let’s all exhale, shall we? There.  Doesn’t that feel nice?

PS_

Hey!  If anybody connected with Cymbeline is reading this thing, Congratulations.  You’ve been doing awesome.  I’ve seen you.