A Creative Mama’s Story

The first two weeks of rehearsal for The Laramie Project have been plagued by cast members quitting and cast members with schedule conflicts. We lost one cast member before the rehearsals started - pregnant (we know what causes this now). Another after the first night of rehearsal - wife had surgery (this one I have lots of compassion for). And another after the first week of rehearsal - sick and tired (not much sympathy here). Oh, and my AD moved to Colorado.

So we are heading into week three with 3 new cast members all having various parts of the blocking working hard to catch up. I exhausted myself this week trying to grin and bear it, keep rolling along, making do, and giving it my best. When in fact I wanted to “plotz” - this means cumble into a heap in Yiddish. I’m a “goyah” (more kindly referred to as a WASP) who lived in Brooklyn for 12 years and I learned that sometims Yiddish is the only way to describe what is actually going on with a person. Anyway, enough with the plotzing - moving on with this post.

I have a wonderful cast of 14 people now and a lovely and talented AD. These are the folks who stuck and we will do this play together. We’re a family for the next month and a half. That’s wonderful. And bless them, they are working hard.

But for the past two weeks all of my energy was focused on the people who couldn’t or wouldn’t play with us. I spent so much time focusing on who wasn’t there - who could I ask, find, or pull in off the street to play with us instead. And, in one case, I wasted a lot of time resenting that I hadn’t cast someone else in the role. It just wasn’t an enjoyable week mostly because of my focus on who was missing instead of who was present. I put my head down and kept plowing through, but I couldn’t enjoy it.

I need to remember this - focus on those who are there and let go of those who cannot play. Find people to play with who are happy and enjoyable to play with. Bless those who don’t want to play and send them on their way. Enjoy the playmates you have - does this sound like a song?