Happy place

Ten actors. Intimate theater. Black (and gray and white but mostly black) costumes. Minimal set pieces. Black paint. Lots and lots of black paint.

Big, bright, bold theater.

It's all a matter of perspective

Apparently I made too big a deal last time about who stands in front in our post-run selfies because now we’re doing that whole Renaissance vanishing-point thing with Rob and Scott shrinking into the Florentine distance, albeit with an anachronistic scattering of focal points. ART!

Or ALBUM COVER!

In need of a BAND NAME!

POSSIBILITIES:

The HIPAA Violations
The Moist Selfies
Holy Shit It’s Early
Running Shoes Are Expensive
Jake and the Not Jakes
Does This Stink?
Two Guys Who Do Lots Of Theater And Who Is That Guy Who’s Always Hiding In The Background?
Scott And Two Guys Who Do Lots Of Theater
Three Guys Who’ve Never Done Follies Together

I'll keep working on it ...

What I learned this morning:

1. I think I’ll be able to run tomorrow’s 8K.

2. There’s a chance I may be an idiot for doing it.
3. Which would completely sabotage all my summer and fall running goals.
4. Or not.
5. My physical therapist gave me the go-ahead to run tomorrow, but only because she trusts me to pull my head out of my ass and stop running at the first sign of pain.
6. Those weren’t her exact words.
7. But she’s right.
8. These two yahoos are saints for joining me this morning in what I warned them might end up being just a lovely sunrise walk.
9. Which it pretty much was.
10. I estimate we ran a mile and walked a mile and a half in aggregate.
11. My stupid-damn-fuck-you-I-hate-you-I-hate-you-I-hate-you-not-fair-why-why-why-injured hip is definitely sore right now.
12. But in an I’m-just-being-overly-cautious sensitive way and not an I’ve-reactivated-my-injury-and-completely-sabotaged-all-my-summer-and-fall-running-goals way.
13. I think.
14. But I just said “I think” on list number 13, which probably negates it and I might as well set up a ladder in a black-cat breeding mill and walk under it.
15. Or I just said that to pad this list so it reaches 25.
16. Game ON!
17. We didn’t plan to be so collectively patriotic in our running attire this morning.
18. Clearly Rob and I are actory drama queens because we’re not afraid to be weird in our selfies.
19. Clearly Scott is a master of self-restraint and decorum because he always looks normal and respectable in our selfies.
20. Or he’s just a fun-selfie sabotager.
21. You’d think that given the consistency in his boring, normal smiles over the last two months that Facebook would always automatically recognize him when I post our selfies.
22. But you’d be wrong.
23. But we still embrace him as one of our own.
24. C’mon, 25! You can do it!
25. BOOYAH!
26. Oops.

One Man, Two Guvnors, Three Hundred Times I Call "Line!"

I defy anyone -- ANYONE! -- to memorize the line "What's a decent drink for a geezer like you for a day's graft?" and cough it up on-demand on a stage full of actors waiting expectantly for you to stumble through those land mines of jumbled d- and g-words so they can carry on with the part of the dialogue that actually might make sense on this continent.

And, scene.

A rehearsal on the bridge

One Man, Two Guvnors
One bridge, two actors

Let's do this!

I'm about to run a 10K with these insanely nice, insanely talented theater friends. I've shared the stage with each one of them and I love that our friendships have bled over into the running world as well.

So this just happened

It seems I've been cast as one of the Guvnors in One Man, Two Guvnors, leaving the roles of One Man and The Other Guvnor of course in the hands of two other dudes. 

I've never played someone who was in the title of the show before. Probably because Evita's Brother and Smudge the Socially Awkward Plaid wouldn't fit on the marquee. Plus I haven't done a non-musical in more than two years. If I remember correctly, all you need to do in a regular play is just say a lot of words and occasionally point at stuff. So this should be easy. 

But I'm stoked beyond belief over this opportunity and this role and this show and this director and this CAST. And I'm going to keep my tap shoes backstage during every show just in case. Because I'm liable to burst into song at a moment's notice anyway. And some habits are hard to break.

One audition, two scenes

I just auditioned for my first non-musical in over two years. Which means I couldn't rely on my mad tapping skillz or ironically croon a girl song (which is ironic, see, because I'm a boy) as a theatrical device to give the illusion that I'm creative and resourceful and positively visionary and therefore an indispensable artistic asset to any final casting decision.

No. I just had to act -- the one stage-play-craft thing I'm least confident about -- tonight. In a British accent, no less. And -- unlike a month ago when I auditioned for Grease and my ONE JOB was to use the Midwestern American accent I've had FOR 49 YEARS but NOOOOO! I suddenly out of nowhere started talking in a freaking SOUTHERN ACCENT that WOULD NOT GO AWAY -- tonight I stayed as British as I could ever hope to sound for the entire audition, no doubt in part because of the seven British lines I just had -- including "wanker"! giggle giggle -- in Billy Elliot.

So now all that's left to do is madly obsess over every word I stumbled on and every probably catastrophic artistic auditiony choice I made tonight until there's a callback or a cast list posted on Wednesday. Y'all.

Three very important things about tonight's final Victor/Victoria dress rehearsal

1. I got the right side of my mustache glued on totally perfect. The left side ended up kinda crooked so I took it off for this picture so I could just show you how well I did on the good side.

2. Our dressing room is a hanger GOLD MINE. Usually when you do a show you have to keep one eye on the conductor and one eye on your backstage hangers because theater people are dirty, barbarous hanger thieves who will throw your costumes on the floor and destroy every carefully organized bow tie and ruffled shirt of your pre-sets in a heartbeat if it means they can get an extra wisp of breeze to dry out their stinky wet clothes between performances. But our dressing room is literally exploding in a bountiful celebration of hangers, which means there are more than enough for everyone, which eliminates the usual petty hanger thievery that's so endemic among people inclined to break into song without warning, which gives everyone more time and more freedom to be jealous and bitter about the solos we didn't get and to maliciously hide each other' props.

3. My rainbow skateboarding Snoopy shirt is totally super-cute.