Wrap up

It's amazing when you look back how the bad things are forgotten and the good things magnified. What a wonderful week I just had! Out of 8 performances I had 3 that I felt were about as good as I can do and only 2 that were fairly disastrous. I was physically exhausted by the Sunday matinee, the assistant stage manager was late and the audience had to wait 25 minutes before the show could begin. They were not in a good mood. My monologue just kind of laid there, it was ok. But my other scene suddenly came to life that day. For the very first time everything clicked and I really felt as if I was listening and reacting with the other actor instead of just feeding cues. About midway through I could just feel we had the audience in the palm of our hands. The last few lines brought audible gasps, and the applause was natural, buoyant, the real thing. It was our best performance by far and as an added bonus the playwright had chosen that day to attend. He was very pleased, to say the least. He was profuse in his praise. And he sent us all an e-mail yesterday thanking us again and telling us he was inspired to create even better work now that he knew "he could get it into the hands of pros like you." Heh, how lucky he didn't see it Saturday night when we went up on lines and confusedly groped our way through the entire affair.
So, now I start my new acting class tomorrow. I met one of the top improv guys in Boston during this time and am planning on taking some classes from him as soon as I have the time. Now, if I can just figure out how to get by without the day job...