Aaaaaand we're OFF! 

Opened my umpteenth show last night, Dante Green's An Incomplete List of All The Things I'm Going To Miss When The World Is No Longer produced by Dacha Theatre at Theatre Off Jackson in Seattle's International District. And - I have a few things to say.

I'm getting old. I've worked on many shows since my first outing, playing Mother Rabbit in a little play whose name I don't remember at YWCA kindergarten in Singapore. 

Christmas Cynic
by Carolynne Wilcox
 
I’ve always been a cynic – from the time I figured out Santa didn’t actually exist (I figured it out shortly after my 8th Christmas, because Santa had stopped both at Grandma’s house AND our apartment that year, which didn’t seem logical – plus he seemed to have several different types of handwriting, which seemed fishy to me). Which was why I never bothered even entering the “meet Santa” lottery that year. My friend Megan entered my name, and wouldn’t you know it, I WON. I rolled my eyes in disdain. Oh goody, I thought, I get to go have my photo taken with some mall santa and get a candy cane and maybe an autograph. Yipeee.
 
WELL. The next day, the doorbell rang, and I found a big red box stood on my doorstep, complete with a glittery green bow. I thought I heard a high-pitched giggle, but I didn’t see anyone. When I opened the box, a huge burst of glitter hit me in the face – which normally would’ve made me sneeze, but it seemed to hit my cheek with a tingle and then burst out of existence – that was odd, but I dismissed it, finding an envelope inside, resting on something red and furry, which turned out to be a heavy, warm snowsuit! Inside the envelope was a ticket to Finland, with instructions I was to be picked up at the Helsinki airport and transported to my destination. I was to leave the following week.
 
I’d seen the Gordon Ramsay buddy program where he teamed up with two other Europpean dudes in the culinary industry and gone to “the north pole” in Finland, so I assumed this must be where I was going – definitely cooler than a mall santa, for sure! But nothing could’ve prepared my cold, cynical heart for what was to come next.
 
A small man with pointy ears greeted me at the airport, said his name was Sven, and seemed to know exactly who I was, and shuttled me “this way” with his adorable what I assumed was Finnish accent. I was groggy and jetlagged, so I let him escort me to his car, which was just an ordinary SUV, a red Nissan Pathfinder, I think, but as I said, I was exhausted, and promptly fell asleep in the backseat. 
 
I woke up what must’ve been hours later. It was dark and the SUV had stopped. Sven was nowhere to be found, but there was a knock at the backseat door, which then opened and a smaller man with pointier ears, who proclaimed himself as Gunter escorted me through the snowy woods...which would’ve been pitch black, but for the brilliant northern lights dancing above our heads. We came to a small clearing with a tiny log cabin. We set my things down in the cabin and I didn’t really have a good look around, because he took me outside again and showed me a little sauna outhouse  as well as a small hole dug into a frozen lake with a ladder. He instructed me to remove my clothes, get into the sauna for 15 min, quickly jump into the freezing hole, and then go back into the cabin and bathe. 
 
Dumbfounded, but always hungry for a new adventure, I did as I was told – sweated profusely in the sauna where a tiny woman with pointy ears (Lilja) helped me keep track of the time in the sauna. It felt exhilarating to leave the boiling sauna and go out into what must’ve been significantly below-zero air, and I jumped eagerly into the hole, but climbed up the ladder twice as fast, where Lilja handed me a robe and escorted me back to the cabin, where she put me in a tub of water that was the perfect temperature between warm and scalding, and proceeded to scrub me nearly raw with a salt-scrub and hard-bristled brush! Afterwards, she brought me the softest red, woolen pajamas and put me at a table laden with figs, berries, rye bread, butter, cheese and smoked, salted fish. There was also a creamy salmon soup. While I devoured EVERYTHING, because I didn’t realize how hungry I was, and it was all delicious, Lilja built a roaring fire in the fireplace. The she left, but not without instructing me to sleep well – “you’ll need it!”, and to be ready in the red snowsuit at dawn.
 
Being a habitual insomniac and sleeping for so many hours on the way from the airport, not to mention being intrigued about what was to come, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep at all, but like with everything else, I’d underestimated the experience. I hopped into the little twin bed, which was like lying on a firm, pillowy cloud, the most comfortable mattress I’d ever been lucky enough to rest my body on, and hopped on my phone to try and get a message to Megan, but barely registered I had no reception before I fell soundly asleep, waking up who knows how many hours later in exactly the same position, with the phone lying on my chest, feeling completely refreshed and tingly. 
 
It was still dark outside, but according to my phone (which was fully charged, despite the fact I fell asleep before I could charge it!), it was dawn...not much light that far north in December, I surmised. 
 
There was new, clean and steaming bathwater for me again, and, as if on cue, a knock at the door, wherein Lilja took me out to repeat the sauna/cold plunge/bath-and-salt-scrub experience again. Lilja told me to be ready in an hour.
 
The fire was still roaring in the fireplace, and there was food on the table – similar to the night before, rye bread, cheese, butter, salted fish, plus little pies and pastries, berries, and some hot, stiff coffee. Once again, I discovered a roaring appetite within, and devoured EVERYTHING. I looked outside again, to see things had lightened up to a dim twilight, and guessed it must be a typical December morning around these parts. 
 
I put on my red snowsuit, and thank goodness there was no mirror so I couldn’t see how ridiculous I must’ve looked! I grabbed my phone again to see I had about 10 minutes left, just enough to trot a quick message off to Megan! But of course, I still had no bars, so I just sat for awhile, allowing my thoughts to catch up to me, and wondering about the experience that was to come.
 
At this point, I wouldn’t exactly have called myself a True Believer, but a spark of belief was beginning to take root inside me, once I tallied up all the slightly magical things that had already taken place seemingly before my eyes, starting with the disappearing glitter bomb from the initial package. A knock at the door bounced me out of my reverie – it was Gunter, again, waiting to escort me to The Man Himself – St Nicholas, Papa Noel, Father Christmas, I was ready to meet Santa Claus!
 
TO BE CONTINUED

At first, we didn’t even know they were there. Little things started happening in our idyllic, semi-rural community of farmettes. First it was Old Lady Capshaw down the lane – accusing the kids of stealing her apple pies or reading glasses off her front porch. We didn’t pay it much mind then – she’s 92 and her memory isn’t what it used to be. Chalked it up to her misplacing the glasses or not actually baking the pie. After it kept happening over months, we questioned all the kids – ranging in age from 5-17, across all 7 farmettes – and they all denied stealing anything. Had no reason to doubt them, they loved their old granny Capshaw, wouldn’t’ve done anything to cause her distress on purpose. 
 
Other things started to go missing, and not just off front porches. Hens didn’t seem to be laying as many eggs over the summer, and small items missing from the clothesline. A hammer taken out of Horace Johnson’s tool shed and little Charley Harris’s jr Big Wheel. We were all trying desperately to be neighborly and not blame one another, but it was obvious a thief was in our midst. We’d smile at our neighbors on the street but cast an eye of suspicion after they passed.
 
They got bolder in the fall – parts being taken out of tractors, locks broken, bags of grain missing from silos, an entire hog taken right out of her pen on the Henderson farmette! And on around Halloween, Charley’s big brother Jimmy was out in the pumpkin patch to collect future jack-o-lanterns one evening and heard a rustling in the corn nearby, then claimed to have seen a shadowy figure running away with a sackful of corn. He used it to scare the little ones, so we only half believed them, until other strange things started happening.
 
First Jenny Larson, who was 12 years old and never told a lie in her life, said she saw three dark figures near the Johnson barn when she was walking home from the Sadie Hawkins dance at the Junior High, which lent credence to Jimmy’s story. She turned away to ask if her friend Hannah had seem them and then they were gone, but she swears she saw ‘em. Old Man Jones was fishing out by the Snyder Pond - which is way out on the periphery of the community – and says he found a small lean-to under a big boulder with four little bedrolls and a bunch of other stuff, but when he brought some of the other men to scout it out, it was gone. And strangest of all were the...mobiles? talismans?...that started showing up all over the place, in trees, under porches, inside milkboxes and barns – small, crudely-fashioned figures of animals and people whittled from wood or woven from reeds and cornhusks.
 
That Thanksgiving was tense as we all gathered in our houses, gathered for meetings, took turns walking the parameter keeping watch for any weird activity – and weird activity we did see, but always at dusk, always on the periphery, always out of the corner of our eyes. We tried to keep a watchful eye, but eggs, hens and livestock were still disappearing out from under us, and several folks heard giggles even as they heard quick footsteps taking flight.
 
As the first snows started to fly, the odd footsteps that led to nowhere started appearing. And early on Christmas morning, young Harvey Weaver and his new wife had gotten up with the chickens to milk the cows and as they headed back to the farmhouse, saw four dark figures leaning up against the fence on the Larson’s north field, watching them. Standing and sitting, lined up against the fence, watching, unmoving, unafraid.
 
That’s when the kids started disappearing, one by one.

Which American do I pick? The Mormon or the Texan? I probably shouldn’t be so confused – after all, I already have plans to marry the Texan and go to Texas with him. But...
 
I’ve been dating the Texan for two years. He’s funny – he makes me laugh, and I can completely be myself around him. He’s cute, too – in a nerdy way. I’m just not sure I ever pictured marrying someone like him – it’s not as romantic as I expected it to be with your beloved.
 
The Mormon is here on his mission, we’re not actually dating, but...I allowed him to “convert” me. Ha ha – not really – I’m Jewish, after all, and that’s how I’ll stay, but he’s cuuute and so very earnest, and we can’t date because of his mission, so yeah, I allowed myself to listen to his teachings.
 
My parents would be scandalized if they knew this – they like the Texan – he comes from a good family, though he’s not jewish, either.
 
But the other day, something happened. Me and the Mormon were talking through a chain link fence. He told me his mission was almost over, that he was leaving. My hand was on the fencepost and...he covered my hand with his...which is a HUUUGE no-no, because he’s on his mission! So I knew I wasn’t imagining it, that there was something between us! My heart nearly exploded, it was sooo romantic.
 
I went home and cried. 
 
I went out with the Texan. He could see how miserable I was, and figured out why. Well. Do you know what he said?
 
“I hate to see you so sad. I know why you’re sad. I have money saved for us to travel back to Texas, but you can have it. You can have it, and you can follow him. I just want you to be happy.”
 
Now how’s a girl supposed to respond to that???

I married the Texan, after all. We married here, in Montevideo with our families there to witness. I moved to Texas with him, but we didn't stay long - moved to California to teach at Peace Corps camp, where we had our oldest daughter - then moved onto Vermont. I took a trip back home when the baby was about 7 months old, so she could meet her Abuelos, and do you know what my mother told me?

The Mormon came back. 

Yes - around the time the baby was born, the Mormon knocked on her door. He was done with his mission, and had come back for me. HE CAME BACK FOR ME! Now that's something out of a romance novel if ever there was. IN the novel or the film, of course, the heroine would drop everything to be with her ONE TRUE LOVE - but of course, real life is stranger and more mundane by turns. I loved The Texan too, and now we had a baby to think of. And I was happy in my new life.

The Mormon married someone else and had three kids. The Texan and I saw the whole world more than twice over! And also had three kids. The Mormon and I exchange holiday cards every year. Everything worked out the way it was supposed to, but I'm a storyteller, and sometimes I wonder what might've happened if...

Our love affair began on May 20, 1992 as I sped north from Portland. I had dreamed of you for nearly a year before, set a path in motion that I wouldn’t deviate from. The long drive up from San Diego with $75 in my pocket for gas and about $200 to my name in the bank and a whole lot of homemade food for the journey. Exhilarated and terrified, spent a week in San Francisco with Jonathan, both of us broke, broke, broke, then moved on to Portland for 3 days, where they confiscated my credit card at the hotel and I had to pay by check – spent half of that $200 on 2 nights in a hotel until I finally got hold of Matt (no cell phones in those days) and spent the final night at his place before heading north as the sun set, north to YOU.
 
I remember the miles between us falling away in my rear-view mirror and the sun-kissed rain forest on both sides of I-5. My mind was going in anxious circles – would you welcome me? Would I be okay? I was moving towards you pretty much sight unseen: would we be compatible?
 
Sometime after Tacoma, I passed that bend in the road, a bend I know well now, after decades. I saw you, for the first time, awaiting my arrival. I saw you, and a calm came over me. The anxiety and fear gone, and only the one feeling remained: I was home. I had finally reached you, my beautiful, mythical Emerald City, and you embraced me at once with open arms and took me in.
 
We separated once, a long, drawn-out separation. I didn’t want to leave you, but my heart’s desire lay elsewhere. It tore my heart in two as I sped away on I-90, not knowing where the future would take me, but once again, speeding along an interstate, exhilarated and terrified. I didn’t know if I’d find my way back to you again.
 
But somehow, 3 years later, I did, this time at 30,000 feet – I had to resist kissing the ground, and opened my mouth to taste your air, so very different, so very life-giving compared to that of Baltimore. The grounding factors of mountain, sea and fire in your topography have always put my soul aright. 
 
We were together again, and, though we’ve had our issues, you’ve been the one constant in my life. I grew up here with you. I’ve become here I am, my footprints all over every inch of you, your streets, your hills, your shores. You are a part of me, my rainy beautiful one, and our love is pure. 

​You had the weirdest food anxiety: always leaving two bits of kibble “for later”, always wanting me to watch you, even rub your butt while you ate. I laughed, and indulged you, sometimes. Now that you’re gone, I wish I’d indulged you more. I wish I’d watched you eat for a minute longer, wish I’d rubbed your furry little arse through all of your meals. 10 years of cuddles, of purrs, of not getting up because you were sleeping on me, of watching you ricochet sideways off the couch, of your sweet, expressive meows. Time. Always fleeting, always too short.

​Exhaustion. That’s what I felt as I spend home after 5 straight days of tech. Total and utter exhaustion. “TECH”, for the uninitiated, is that period immediately leading up to opening night of a play or musical, where all the elements of the production come together. You bring in the lights, the sound, special effects if you have them (a projectionist in this case!), the final props, the final touches on the set, the costumes, the hair and makeup – everything comes together and we spend HOURS figuring out how to merge it so it’s seamless when we finally get an audience. 
 
Though I’ve been a theatre artist for decades, I’m quite new to the world of professional theatre. Prior to this year, I was used to working a full day and THEN going to rehearsal in the evenings and on weekends, 2 hours here, 4 hours there. Usually, we’d have a week, often the call time was something like “7pm until we’re finished”, which often is close to midnight.
 
This time, it’s been two weeks of tech, 8 hours per day, with a 2-hour meal break in the middle, and it’s a great deal of slog where the actors are concerned, the equivalent of multiple takes, I imagine, for a film actor. It’s where we go over a particular tiny bit of the script over and over again to make sure the lighting, sound, FX, blocking, lines and everything else are as we want them to be. It’s a slog. A necessary one, but a slog.
 
A magical thing had also happened earlier on that Sunday of tech slog: The West Seattle Bridge had opened, after a couple years of south-end traffic gridlock, and I didn’t merely drive home, I hurtled along at what felt like light-speed comparatively, meaning I was actually able to go the speed limit instead of deal with an hour of bumper-to-bumper. I made it from the Seattle Center to my house, on the 6700 block of Rainier, in 12 minutes flat.
 
And as my car sped south, my exhaustion turned into exhilaration. This “slog” I’d just gone through? It was because we’re telling an amazing and important story. Everyone in the room wanted to make sure it was JUST RIGHT. It’s a story about real people who lived, and who did difficult things so others would benefit, and everyone on the creative team wants to make sure we honor those people and give their story justice. All our hard work, learning lines, putting in pin-curls to wear uncomfortable wigs, inching line by line through text so the lighting and sound are in synch...we’re doing it for them. And for US. They wanted a better world. WE want a better world. People like to talk about the arts as frivolous and unnecessary, “it’s not WORK, you’re just having fun.” There’s a truth to that. But telling stories like this also feels important.
 
And as the exhaustion started to turn into sparkly exhilaration, I also remembered yeah, I “get” to do this. I “get” to tell this story. I “get” to be an actor. I have fought for decades to be exactly where I am right now. This enviable position of being invited to audition in the professional arena and then getting to do the work itself. So, through the slog of tech, through the driving back and forth on a traffic-clogged I-5 to rehearsals, all of it exhausting, all of it exhilarating and it all comes down to this, in our silly world of toxic capitalism: I actually get to put “actor” under “occupation” when I fill out my taxes next year, and after such a long road, that feels extremely fucking satisfying.    

1.) The Clean Houseby Sarah Ruhl
A romantic comedy about loss, love, change and redemp-tion, The Clean House is both whimsical and touching. A serious career-oriented doctor, Lane, has hired a quirky Brazilian maid. The only problem is that the maid, Matilde, hates to clean. Instead, she longs to be a comedienne. Lane is deserted by her husband, Charles, who leaves her for his mistress, Ana, a passionate, older Argentinian woman upon whom he recently performed a mastectomy. Sarah Ruhl's enchanting play reminds us that there is humor and beauty to be find in life's most unlikely messes.
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2.) The Maidsby Jean Genet
Solange and Claire are two housemaids who construct elaborate sadomasochistic rituals when their mistress (Madame) is away. The focus of their role-playing is the murder of Madame and they take turns portraying both sides of the power divide. Their deliberate pace and devotion to detail guarantees that they always fail to actualize their fantasies by ceremoniously "killing" Madame at the ritual's dénoue-ment.
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3.) Eclipsedby Danai Gurira
Amid the chaos of the Liberian Civil War, the captive wives of a rebel officer band together to form a fragile community—until the balance of their lives is upset by the arrival of a new girl. Drawing on reserves of wit and compassion, Eclipsed reveals distinct women who must discover their own means of survival in this chilling and humanizing story of transformation and renewal in a hostile world of horrors not of their own making.
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4.) BFEby Julia Cho
Cute blondes are disappearing from her strip mall-covered suburban town, but fourteen-year-old Panny is more concerned with surviving adolescence. Raised by an unbalanced mother who thinks the perfect birthday gift is plastic surgery and a shy uncle who spends most of his time painting miniatures, Panny is afraid she’s hopelessly different. Thanks to a fortuitous misdial, she strikes up a phone friendship that seems to be the connection she’s been longing for.
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5.)Circle Mirror Transformationby Annie Baker 
Five lost people come together at a community center class to try and find some meaning in their lives. Counting to ten can be harder than you think. Over six tangled weeks, their lives become knotted together in this tender and funny play.
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6.) God of Carnageby Yasmina Reza
What happens when two sets of parents meet up to deal with the unruly behavior of their children? A calm and rational debate between grownups about the need to teach kids how to behave properly? Or a hysterical night of name-calling, tantrums, and tears before bedtime? A bitingly funny and whip smart examination of the things we don’t think we teach or children.
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7.) 4000 Milesby Amy Herzog
After suffering a major loss while he was on a cross-country bike trip, 21 year-old Leo seeks solace from his feisty 91-year-old grandmother Vera in her West Village apartment. Over the course of a single month, these unlikely roommates infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately reach each other. 4000 Miles looks at how two outsiders find their way in today’s world.
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8.) Blastedby Sarah Kane
Blasted opened in 1995, making front-page headlines and outraging some critics who thought her premise that there was a connection between a rape in a Leeds hotel room and the hellish devastation of civil war was simply an attempt to shock audiences. Brutal and graphic, “Blasted” is important but not for the faint of heart.
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9.) Ohio State Murdersby Adrienne Kennedy
When Suzanne, an African American writer, enters Ohio State University in 1949, little does she know what the supposed safe haven of academia holds in store. Years later, Suzanne is invited to return to the University to talk about the violence in her writing. A dark mystery unravels. The play is an intriguing, unusual and chilling look at the destructiveness of racism in the U.S.
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10.) Stop Kissby Diana Sun
The story is deceptively simple: two young women in New York meet, talk about their boyfriends, feel a growing, unspoken attraction for each other, and finally kiss. And that one innocent kiss sets off a savage gay-bashing. Callie is holding down a job as a radio traffic reporter when she meets Sara, a Midwesterner who, against her parents’ wishes, has moved to the city to teach third-grade students in the Bronx. Both have boyfriends, but as they get to know each other, their shared experiences and sense of humor create a strong bond. The tragic consequences of their kiss—the center of this powerful drama—serve as both an indictment of hatred and a moving study of the perils inherent in living life fully.