Well its been a while since I last updated. It has certainly been a whirlwind of a summer. To recap, Passing got selected for Samuel French and I will be performing in NYC this Friday.
While incredible, this show has been very draining. First thing was after I was in rehearsals for NYC we had the show switched around and I was changed to Newton. Now I could have enjoyed the role if it wasn't for the fact that I had been originally picked for Pat. Try as I might I could not be happy with it. Don't get me wrong, Newton is a fun role, and it plays a LOT into the show and is certainly not a throw-away part, and there's no doubt that I had set out to be the best Newton I could be, but a part of me just wasn't in it.
Just as I was finally settling into the role came the great cast change. The playwrite had decided that the cast wasn't cutting it and needed to be changed. After a very long rehearsal where we were all drilled to find out how well we knew the play, we were all changed around. I was back to Pat from Newton. Figg was cut. Lee stayed the same but it was still the same as after the first change. Pat was cut. Figg and Newton were replaced by the understudies. Pow. Zoom. Bang. For the next week I had to constantly have people ask me how much I enjoyed having my original role back, or why didn't I seem happier now that I was playing Pat again. As much as I wanted the role back I didn't want it like that. It wasn't fair or right, but then again when is life ever fair. I suppose I should have been happy that for the first time in my life I gained from the situation instead of being the one to get screwed, as is usually the case.
As much as I loved Cate as my stage partner playing Lee and then playing opposite me as Figg, I knew that she had too much going on with the IQP, the show was stressing her to the max and her lines just weren't coming enough. She probably could have worked out as Lee but as Figg she just didn't have the time, and even as Lee what would she have given up in her work for the IQP? There's only so much energy you can put towards things and in the end if you do too much something or everything can suffer if you don't realize your limits.
I also didn't like getting Pat back by having Matt get cut. Matt was really starting to get into the role as Pat, and as hard as it was to sit there and see him miss lines that I knew cold, I knew that he was getting there and that he'd make Pat his own character.
Maybe I'm just too sensitive about these things but I had a bit of survivor's guilt when the shake-up ended.
From there we continued. We learned the dynamics of the new cast and slowly got the show going again. For me the fun was mostly gone. At this point it was a job and the final project was NYC. I had comitted to it and I was going to do it. Not exactly the mindset you'd think for going to NYC to perform for the first time ever. Lots of people would kill for this opportunity, and I barely cared.
That all changed tonight. We had our preview performance and the energy was there. The performance was incredible. I was so excited at the end of it and so was the rest of the cast. Its finally hitting me that I'm really, really, really going to NYC. This is gonna be great!
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