Child-like

Part of tonight's rehearsal was all about working with Damon and his stilts and the kinds of fabric he'll be wearing. My director is out of town so it was just me and Damon and Jeff (costume designer) and Tony (puppet/stilt man). At one point we decided to tape some cheese cloth to the mask Damon wears, to be a mock-up of the ninja mask he'll eventually wear. The cheese cloth we had was big and flowy so Jeff cut a head sized hole in it and slipped over me, like a poncho. He then put the Storm King gigantic mock up crown/mask on me and proceeded to tape them together, with Tony's help. Damon stood by, 8 foot something on his stilts.

Jeff and Tony put the mask/cloth contraption on me precisely because I wasn't 8 feet tall and they could reach my head. What ended up happening, though, was that I got to stand perfectly still for five min or so and be fussed over, totally unseen. I was behind a screen of cheese cloth (a veil, if you will, which I did because I'm that kind of girl) and these three tall men towered over me, pulling and pushing the cloth, taping and humming and working and I got to just stand. 

I was looking up into these manly faces, unconsulted and unnoticed. I realized how little of my time I spend looking up at people and started, for the first time, to mourn my height. I liked this stolen time of smallness. 

I felt like a little girl, actually. I loved it.