Thursday, November 8, 2007

dress rehearsal

I came home from the 2nd day of cue-to-cue last night, weepy from lack of food and mental exhaustion. Cried hard in Jon's arms for a few minutes, not really from any specific worry or pain, but more as a release of the day's tensions. The hard part of this job isn't calling a million cues or being super-organized: it's having to field a 1/2-dozen questions at a time and give all the right answers; it's having to appear calm and in control all the time and never, ever crack the veneer of capability. I don't have the experience to know if this is just a particularly difficult show (although I know that it is) or if it's a difficult show and my inexperience is making everyone's job harder.
Tonight as we were standing outside the theatre, our director mentioned that "the professional team all seemed tenser than other ones she had worked with before." There are a lot of factors that could be contributing to this: time constraints (it's a union house so we have to be out of there right on time or mucho money is added to our bill), the inexperience of the cast (who are much less stable than other casts she's worked with), the fact that our director and assistant director rub people the wrong way...
But of course, all I could think of was: Ohgod, it's me. I'm causing this. This is my fault. For being new at this, for not taking better control...
And then I just have to give myself a mental shake and say Forget it. You called over 175 cues tonight with hardly any mistakes. You got everybody out of the theatre on time: cast, film crew, backstage crew. You listened to people's concerns and dealt with several stressful personality conflicts as they arose. You were not perfect, but you did a good job.
Dress rehearsal was great. Tensions aside, the cast did a good job, I called a pretty good show and the backstage crew worked really hard. If the lighting designer's still on speaking terms with me tomorrow then I'll relax a bit. A little bit, anyway.

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