I am sore and exhausted and it feels fantastic. Lifeline Theatre's Treasure Island has occupied all of my free time for the last month and will continue to do so for the next couple of weeks. We have this brief respite tonight and for the next twenty-four hours. I'm not sure if we have the day off because it's Labor Day or because the designers have more work to do or just because they thought we'd need a break right about now, but whatever the reason the respite is more than welcome. This just might be the most physically challenging show I've ever worked on. Defiant's A Clockwork Orange was a beast but I was five years younger and I think that makes a huge difference. Plus, Clockwork didn't have the crazy costume changes that TI has. I'm sweaty and out of breath in the first five minutes.
The show is coming together swimmingly. We had one casualty: An actor dislocated his kneecap during a fight scene last week and now his understudy is doing yeoman's work getting up to speed. He's doing a great job, and we'll get the original actor back in a few weeks, but the whole thing has served to focus the cast as a unit. Today we finished our cue-to-cue and accomplished the first full tech run of the show. We avoided a clusterfuck because we were able to dig in as a group and look out for each other as we made our mad dashes from one entrance to another while scrambling out of one costume and into another. There was a fair amount of rough spots but nothing beyond what one should expect from a first run. It's gonna be a good show.
To add to my fun, I may have a small fight choreographer gig coming up as well, which I will discuss when I know more details. It's for a group I'm fond of, and a cool script, so I'm keeping fingers crossed. Scheduling is tricky, so it's not a done deal as yet.
As much as I'm loving keeping busy in theater, I must confess I am looking forward to my self-imposed break after Treasure Island ends. I'm not committing to any more acting jobs that start rehearsal before next January 1. If the itch is there I may try to get a show that starts around then just to keep busy until Neverwhere begins. Oh, did I mention that I got cast in a stage version of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere? Hmm. Well it's true. As you can imagine I completely jazzed about this development, but we've got a while before we start work on it. After my Treasure Island experience, however, I do feel like I may want to consider some real physical training to get ready for it. I play several parts, most of whom have some serious violence work attached to them. Should be fun, but I don't want my ass kicked again the way it is now.
We shall have to see about that, though. I want to join a gym but I'm not sure where yet, and we are having some apartment issues that may have us moving sooner than we had planned, so we shall have to see. Until then, Treasure Island is giving me about all the workout I can handle.
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