Read Through

Well, I got the part of Beth in "The Mistakes Madeline Made," a play written by Elizabeth Merriwether. She's 25. I'm not. Beth is in "her late 30's or early 40's." I am. This weekend I tried on some clothes and lamented that my body looked like cottage cheese piled into a pair of underpants. How is this fair when I bike and yoga every single day? Note: Mid-life crises.

Everyone at the read-through was great. Funny. I think we'll all get along well. Am I the oldest one? Likely. We sat under Sean's new gazebo and read through the whole play without any breaks. There was a lot of laughter. The play has moments of hilarity that are interrupted by deep sadness, like a punch in the gut.

Theatre work always makes me key in on conversations and dialogue, and I want to write everything down. Last night I overheard some people I worked with a few years ago talking at a restaurant. God, they were pretentious. They deserved to be eavesdropped on, notated. Who calls women "chicks?" Chicks dig it, he said. Cripes.

I have lines to learn. Many of them, but I know I can do it. It's been done before. What makes me sad is this - all these characters, any character that any actor has played, dies the moment the lines vanish from memory. That particular way that character was portrayed, I mean. Sure the character still lives on the page, but it won't have the same life played through another actor. Which is interesting to me. My Beth gets six shows worth of life, and two years from now, I won't be able to recall a word she said.