So yesterday I had to get up at the crack of whatever to rehearse You Can Look over at Maggie and Russ' house. Gawd, I love doing this show, I love the actors, I love everything about it, but I do not love these early morning rehearsals.

It's coming into shape. Maggie really needs to learn the words to "Go Ask Alice", which I think is funny, since I've known the song since I was 12 years old. Mr. Biegel (old hippy that he was) taught us a class one semester on the '60s, and we heard all of that music. For me, it was a revelation, since my parents were of an earlier generation and we only listened to classical music on the radio, and the records were all musical comedy.

I remember coming home and ripping through my parents' record collection, looking for anything modern. I found the cast album from Hair, which we had heard in class, and one of my favourite albums of all time, The Longine Symphonette Greatest Hits of 1972. Certainly one of the greatest album titles of all time.

I remember that Crispin Glover was a MAD Magazine fanatic (his favourite thing in history was that his father was in one of the Bond movies, and actually appeared in a panel of the satirization of that movie) and we had a debate over whether the '60s actually changed the world or not, his proof that they hadn't was that there was a cover in the late '50s and in the early '70s that were identical, so after all of the revolutions, everything went back to the status quo.

Um, wait, where was I? O yeah, the show is going well. Never mind me.

So, like I said yesterday, it was gaw-jus, weather-wise. So gaw-jus that we actually propped the door for the first time this year. Amy suggested it, but even if she hadn't, I would have done it anyway, just to get some air. And also because I knew that it wouldn't last.

I did end up having to turn on my space heater for part of the afternoon, but I wouldn't have closed that door without there being snow flying into the lobby. Like there is right this very little minute. Yeah. The door is closed today.

Mark is incredibly ill, but he still fed me yesterday. I'm really enjoying this--it's not as though I am incapable of feeding myself, and I often manage to get through the day whether I have eaten or not, but at every rehearsal he has something for me, garlic knots or the salad on Sunday or half of a sausage sandwich yesterday.

He has a fall at the end of one scene while holding several guns, and last night after I got offstage, he was in the dressing room burning the end of a needle.

It turns out that he had fallen on one of the guns and scraped the hell out of his arm and gotten a huge blood blister. It literally had only been about 45 seconds and it was enormous. Anyway, he had me pop it with the needle and squeeze out the blood while he turned away and covered his eyes.

I don't know if it's because he thinks I'm his mother, if he knows I'm not squeamish, or if I'm the only person in the cast he trusts to come anywhere near him with a sharp object, but I was glad to do it. You know me and blood!

Afterwards I saved the needle, putting it in my needle case that I keep in my knitting bag, first asking him if he wanted it back.

"No!"
"Then I'll keep it."
"O, you just want to have something with my blood on it!"
"Well, yeah! Of course I do!"
"You want to do witchcraft!"

I did not dissuade him, since I didn't think saying, "No, I have a blood fetish!" would make him feel any better.

The rehearsal was okay, except for the fact that I didn't run my lines beforehand and got terribly muddled on my long list line, "We want to tell everyone who is against guns, war, smoking, drinking, gambling, smut books, dog wrestling and spaghetti westerns to get over it!" It came out like a mouthful of random words mixed with pebbles and varnish and snow.

Paul has a similar line that starts in a different tense, and I accidentally started in his tense, then couldn't figure out how to wrench it properly into my tense so that the line would make some sort of sense, so I just finished it with a very confused expression on my face.

Yeah, I'll be going over that line before each show, I'm not going to get complacent about that one, by golly.

I do think that Paul is doing a good job in the role, and it's fun working with him, but as happened with Hunter last year, a non-actor poses unexpected difficulties, no matter how good they are.

Things like remembering blocking and understanding how not to upstage yourself and be understood on the stage are not things that come naturally to regular people, and if you have a non-actor, they are going to need help in these areas.

The real loss, I think, is that there are a lot of things that we could be doing together, working off of each other, but we really can't because he's not an actor. He's not my partner in this show, and not just because he's not an actor, but because he is the writer and producer, so he has a lot more to think of besides working with me.

What the hell, he's probably better than I am in the scenes, he certainly was yesterday, so I don't know what I'm babbling about.

So guess what? I'm doing Bubbling!

Glenn had been fuffering around, not certain whether Le had said to definitely cast me or not (what he had said was that it was up to Glenn to decide whether he could deal with my horrible schedule), and he was waiting to hear back from another actress that he had offered to before I had poked me pointed head up, but he finally just decided that he wanted to cast me, so he would cast me!

Of course, right after that he heard from the other actress, but it didn't matter, since she had gone way over her 24 hour response window, and he had already decided on me after all.

So yay! I get to be Big Shirley, one of the best roles ever written for a big woman! I told Glenn that I didn't want to pad myself out and make me bigger, as Moira did when she played the role, and as Le said in his "who wants to play this role?" email, that anyone, big or small, playing the part should pad.

Well, I don't want to, and Glenn said that I didn't have to! He said that Le said that I am comfortable with my body and wouldn't need the psychological crutch of "I'm not really that big, I have to be bulked up to play a fat girl role!"

And of course, I'm am not particularly comfortable with my body in real life, (I've been reading Mo's BFD the past couple of days, and it's amazing how I never realize how skewed my thinking is in terms of fat=ugly until I come across someone as incredibly empowering as Mo), but I am comfortable with it onstage.

I am not one of those tiresome actors who whitter on about their "instrument" until you really want them to step on a rake, but in a way, it's true. How can you use your body as an actor if you hate it or are trying to hide it or are ashamed? And why would you want to pad out and then have to worry about hiding the padding and working with a bigger mass than usual and not feeling in control of your body because it isn't your body? Not me, I don't want that.

And besides, Big Shirley is this fat (but also pretty and sexy and lusty and full of life), so if I wasn't this fat, I wouldn't be able to do the role properly.

The song I've been singing all day:

"Go Ask Alice" by Jefferson Starship

And the white knight's talking backwards
And the Red Queen Says off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

(by the way, if you ever want to really blow your mind, go looking for the lyrics to "Go Ask Alice" on the internet, it's amazing the mondegreens out there as official lyrics.

My personal favourite is "Tell them all who come/Smoking caterpillar has given you the fall" instead of "Tell them a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call".)

Today's horoscope:
Got something romantic to share? Wait until later tonight to let the news fly. Not that it won't be welcome, whenever you mention it. But the later you reveal your feelings, the more accommodating your audience will be.

One year ago today:
Okay, Omar, I believe you. I put your ring back on today after not wearing it for a week. I believe that you and I are part of each other's lives not matter what.

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Last Updated Wed 9 March 15:46:09 2005