Dreamt last night that I was doing Moon and I did the first act and was kind of wandering around during the intermission when I ran into a girl who used to be in the company, and she asked me, very sweetly, if I was kidding with my performance, if I wasn't making a joke. I said no, and she looked embarrassed and said that maybe I should have re-thought some of my character choices.

After that, I dreamt about Nik for probably the first time in two years or longer. His hair was purple.

The show last night was great, the best ever, and a great house. All of whom were fucking dying because it was approximately 150° in the theatre. There are certain sections of the play where I get to stand directly in front of the air conditioner, and I was wondering if I could justify staying there for all of Act II.

Nobody would notice, would they? Philip doesn't move for most of the act, but he's in a chair, so that makes more sense.

Fran put the bloody bottle in the wrong place again, but at least we are used to that mistake, though it looks as though Cynthia can't block momentarily. He also cut about a page out of his monologue in Act III. It came out so clearly that I didn't even notice until he was well past it, I suddenly thought, "What happened to the funeral?" I'm sure the audience appreciated a slightly shorter show.

The funniest thing was that in Act IV, a gigantic waterbug scuttled across the stage, and Fran stomped mightily at it. He couldn't not, and it's not as though it ruined a beautiful moment or anything, but I couldn't actually see the bug, not having my glasses on, and wasn't entirely certain what he was doing.

He went "stomp stomp!", then about a minute later he went behind the pump and gave one final "stomp!" and I could tell by the murmuring of the audience that he had gotten it. Afterwards I went out with my glasses on and recoiled--that thing was as big as my fist! Okay, maybe not, but as big as a baby's foot!

Tonight, when we got to the theatre, Fran remembered to clean it up, something that those of us who are barefoot all through Act I certainly appreciate.

I don't know how many of you remember this, the story of the guy sitting in the front row of one of my shows while wearing white pants and jiggling his foot, but as you can tell from the date, it happened five and a half years ago and I still complain about it. Well, not more. Last night beat it all hollow.

This guy in the company whom I have always thought as being a bit dim but perfectly nice came to the show last night, and from now on will only be known as Evil Rob.

Why has he been dubbed Evil Rob? Well, remember how I said that the audience is on two sides and one side is right on top of us for most of Act III, since we are sitting on the steps right next to them for like 45 minutes? Well, Evil Rob was sitting not in the front row, but in the second row, however because of the weird angle he was basically sitting right next to me. Right next to me. Let me say that again, he was sitting right next to me.

And. He. Did. Not. Stop. Moving.

He was flailing all over his seat, at one point he put his feet up over the seat in front of him and wiggled his foot up and down, he was fanning himself with his programme like everyone else in the theatre, but he was doing it with lots of crinkly noises. It was like sitting next to someone having a seizure for an hour, while trying to have this intense love scene.

And yes, he was wearing white pants.

I will never speak to him again, never. Everyone was acting as though I was going to attack him at the bar, but I had no intention of doing that, just of snubbing him every time I see him for the rest of either his life or his tenure in the company, whichever comes first.

And yes, I know that it's all very pots and kettles on my part after Omar's and my behaviour during King John, but I would like to say in our defense that all we did was annoy the audience, not the actors, we were sitting too far back to distract them.

Anyway, Tracing was there, which didn't quite make up for Evil Rob, but I'm glad she saw it on such a good night.

There are two things that basically everyone has been saying to me after the show, the first of which is, "What a perfect role for you!" which I quite agree with, but I always say back, "Because I'm a great ugly cow?"

This is a joke, because that's a line I have about seven times in the show, but I can tell when people fall all over themselves to deny that that was what they meant, which ones of them really think that.

The other thing that people keep saying is "How did you learn all those lines?!" Now, that's a cliche, non-actors say that to actors all the time, as though the learning of the lines is the most difficult thing in acting, but most of the people who have been saying that to me are other actors!

You know that you've got a lot of lines when that happens.

Of course, the learning of the lines was a motherfucking bitch, but the really hard thing was the emotional layering. You know how we always said, "Thanks a lot, Gene!" in regards to the fact that we all had lines that we repeated over and over again in a slightly different fashion, but the real "Thanks a lot, Gene!" was the fact that he clearly had a really high opinion of actors, because every single line had about five things going on in it--thing said, things unsaid, anger, love, embarrassment, everybody is lying half the time. I guess he thought that that was an easy thing to do!

Thanks a lot, Gene!

Today's horoscope:
Duty and loyalty are the tough but right choices to make. If you abandon your post to follow your pleasure-seeking friends, you'll regret it later. Your record shows what you did and not what you should have done.

One year ago today:
Every little girl who feels wrong should read these books, every little girl who doesn't see herself in fairy tales needs to see that she can be the hero of her story. Every big girl, too.

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Last Updated Thurs 11 July 20:02:09 2003