Stage Manager Nightmares

So I had this anxiety dream two nights ago, and then I had an interesting conversation about it today.

The Dream
I'm stage managing at a theater I've never worked in before (in my dream, I knew it was CoHo but it totally wasn't CoHo-looking at all), and I'm late for our opening performance's show call. I have all the normal anxiety dream problems: I can't find parking (I was driving Velma in my dream! Very exciting! Also, along a cobblestone street? Maybe? I guess I was in Rome? I don't know), the lobby is really crowded, my bags are heavy and numerous, my family is there to see the show and is trying to get my attention, I am encumbered trying to fight my way through the crowd that lead to booth door. When I open the door, I have to climb a long, steep, narrow flight of stairs to get into the booth, like Park Hall's booth stairs (I just remembered that right now, as I tried to describe these stairs).
When I get to the top, I see my board operator standing at the light board with a girl I knew from college, who's name has been changed for a good reason. Let's call her Hannah. The booth looks down at the stage from a distance (a big distance!) and I can see through the window behind these two; I notice that the curtain is down and the audience is filing in. There is a light projected on the curtain with the name of my show. Big proscenium, big booth, big house, big show.
Hannah has her back to the booth window and is minxing it up with my light board operator: running her hands over his biceps, playing sliding a finger down the side of his face, sashaying her hips while standing in place. I'm walking across this extraordinarily long booth, bogged down by my prompt book and my bags when I see her run a manicured finger along the GO button and saucily ask, "What does this button do?"
My light board operator explains that the GO button advances the light cues and moves the show along. She then puts a hand behind his head as if to pull him to her and looks deliberately over his shoulder, locks eyes with me, smiles, and pushes the GO button.
Chaos ensues.
The lights come up on stage (behind the curtain), which my actors take as the cue to start the show. They're panicking because I haven't given a places call yet, so they're all scrambling and terrified. The curtain begins to open, revealing this mess and the audience starts to panic as well, since the house lights are still up and they had no idea the show was starting. Everyone is freaking out 50 feet below us and Hannah is staring at me, never taking her eyes from my face, pressing the GO button over and over and over and over. Scrollers are wheeling madly, lights are flashing everywhere.
I drop everything in my hands and close the gap between us in a moment, pushing my light board operator and Hannah out of the way. I slam my hand down on the blackout button and pull a cord to drop the curtain back down on the stage, thereby cutting the panicked audience off from the panicked actors. I reach for the God Mic to make a house announcement but before I do, I spin around and slap Hannah across the face as hard as I can.

The Conversation
I told the Artists Rep T.D. this dream this afternoon, presenting it as a funny story. "Look at silly Olivia! She has these silly stage management anxiety dreams! Look, haha!" I wanted to make him laugh.
He did laugh, but then he said, "So: who's pushing your buttons?"
Okay, now you should all actually laugh at me because I, the Lit student, the tarot card reader, the dream interpreter, NEVER FUCKING THOUGHT OF THAT. Seriously. I guess it was too literal for me to think of? I don't what it is but Van said that I just kinda stood there, flabbergasted.
Who is pushing my buttons indeed.
Dude, everyone is pushing my buttons. Everything is pushing my buttons.  I have been frustrated, angry, sad, and children's-book-simple-y unhappy for the last two weeks. People who normally get on my nerves have filled me with rage, people who I normally adore have filled me with rage. This is not to say that I have been stomping around in a bad mood for two weeks, but rather that my mood has been switching on a dime. And more importantly, when it switches to all this negativity, I feel like I was never actually happy before. I feel like whatever positive feelings I'd just been feeling were flimsy plywood walls and this anger, this irritable frustration is my solid wooden structure; all the good stuff has always been just a shitty cover up.
I have my theories about where this is all coming from, and I'm trying to eliminate the options one at a time. Our good old friend, the scientific method. I'm trying to narrow it down.
I want to know who (or what) is pushing my buttons.

Pics or it didn't happen

Sometimes, I love my job.

"I don't want your German sausages!"

Mmm, mmm, bitches' brew.

On: Home (Sherlock ReDeux Tech - Day 6)

I'm home now and the last thing I want to write about is home.

On: Home (Sherlock ReDeux Tech - Day 5)

This isn't the blog post I thought I'd be writing an hour ago.

Portland & Santa Cruz

I am unabashedly proud of, vocal about, in love with my hometown of Santa Cruz, CA. I have not yet been the world traveler I'd like to someday be, but I already know that Santa Cruz is one of my favorite places on earth. The people, the climate, the natural beauty, the combination of tall forest grove and Pacific expanses is utterly breath taking.
Something that always makes me feel at home is fog. The Bay Area is known for it's fog and I have countless memories of watching waves of fog crash down on to freeways, beaches and baseball stadiums - clouds mimicking the movement of the water particles that make them. My last summer at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, I worked on Henry IV Part I. The first scene of the second act is conducted partially in Welsh, culminating in a Welsh song about love and loss. When Sepi took the stage to sing this Welsh ballad on our opening night, the entire Glen responded. We were in a theater in the redwoods and Santa Cruz brought the fog down on us so perfectly, it was as if we planned it. Sepi cried all through her song. Many of us wept backstage. Fog has always meant home to me in a primal, etheral, beautiful, sweater-y way. I'm not sure anyone who didn't grown up in the Bay Area can understand how all those adjectives go together but trust me: they do.
So tonight, I drove home after tech with some Marker's Mark "kindling a fire in my belly" and when I hit the Ross Island bridge I was suddenly immersed in it: thick, smoky, woolen Willamette River fog. I had noticed this effect a few nights ago, when I drove up 99E around 1 am. I looked out to my left and saw bridge after bridge obscured by fog. Between them? Open, smooth, water. It was as if the river had finally noticed these intruders spanning it's width and sent long, curled, foggy fingers up from the depths to tear them down. I had seen this fog from afar, but tonight I drove right through it. I looked at all the lights and their foggy halos and I immediately thought of home, of driving back to Ben Lomond from UCSC at night, about the way the fog looks in Mona's front yard in the early hours of the morning.
So: thank you, Portland, for the fog tonight. I've been a bit petulant and resentful recently and I know it's not your fault. I have all these dreams and ideas and wishes and I sometimes take the frustration of being 23 out on you, just as much as I take it out on my roommates, my best friend, my parents and this guy who seems to think he wants to date me. But the truth is: 23 is just hard sometimes. And the other truth is: Santa Cruz is home, but so are you, Portland.

On: Home (Sherlock ReDeux Tech - Day 4)

I've been thinking a lot about homes today - specifically, changing mine.

Some things have happened in the past week that are really making me sit down and think about moving. Job stuff, family stuff, the fact that I've always known I can't really go equity in Portland and I need to go equity to keep working in this business and survive.

So I spent today imagining living on a third floor walk up: having a tiny bedroom with a window that looks out on another wall, a radiator, and a Polish bakery just across the street.

When I came home to Albert Hall tonight, it was pouring rain. I walked up the steps to my house, covering my head and thinking there'd be less rain to dodge - and more walking to dodge it during.

On: Home (Sherlock ReDeux Tech - Day 3)

This blog post was due circa midnight on Wednesday, November 21st.

It is now 12:17p on Friday, November 23rd.

A lot of things happened in between, most of them the reason this blog post was not written.

Suffice it to say: I do not feel the guilt I felt the last time I missed a tech blog post.
Also: Home is a thought that is forefront, timely and terrifying today.

See you all tonight.

On: Home (Sherlock ReDeux Tech - Day 2)

I made it home now and am so ready to go to sleep.

On my drive home I thought about my homes and which one I would write about: my parent's home, the home I'm making here, the home I had at school.

Sometimes I think about the home people build within one another. When are those homes built? Of what material? When do they burn down? Of nature is that fire? How does that e.e.cummings line go? "I hold your heart within my heart"?

My sister flew home tonight and right now, my family is all together under one roof. 700 miles south of me.  But at the same time - Maria leaves tomorrow and tonight might be the last time my family of Summer 2012 are all together under this one roof.

This will be the fifth consecutive Thanksgiving I've spent away from home.

Chels and Maria will both be gone tomorrow night, and I'll have this home to myself (ironically enough, a person I've never felt at home around).

I made it home now and it is time to go to sleep.

***

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

On: Home (Sherlock ReDeux Tech - Day 1)

So, I chose this tech's topic pretty quickly.

I began this blog in November of last year and tech for Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol was the very first tech I did this little I-write-every-night-on-the-same-topic exercise. I wrote about my commute home, since that is what I wrote about after the first tech so I just ended up keeping it up. All of my topics since then have been much more abstract.
I remember writing about driving past the Occupy Portland park mere hours after the riot cops launched their assault on the peaceful protestors; I remember how eerie the empty white lights were on the trodden grass.

So, here I am, a year later and I am in tech for Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol once again. Doing a remount gives me an extreme sense of nostalgia, because all the same-ness only makes me notice the differences more. A part of me misses new-to-Portland-Olivia; living at The Manor, still struggling with a certain fellow, in awe of this theater I'd found.

Which brings me nicely to this tech week's topic: Home. I told MDiFabulous that this was my plan for a topic and she said, "I feel like that word has meant something different to us every three months for the past five years." I completely agree; so I think I'll tackle it one home at a time.

Artists Repertory Theatre

Artists Rep was the first theater to employ me in Portland and has undoubtedly shaped my time here. The second largest theater in the city, one of the three equity houses here, Artists Rep hold a certain reputation for professionalism and it always means something to people when I tell them I work there.

In July, I was hired on as the assistant to the Production Manager there and became staff. It's been a wonderful four months and I have begun to feel like a part of the family there. I am in the building every day and since I started working on Sherlock ReDeux as a PA, I am often in the building for 12/13 hours at a time.

Today, Kelly told me that the budget has not worked out to allow Artists Rep to extend my contract with them. January will be the end of my short time as a staff member at A.R.T. Because Sherlock closes in December, when my contract is up I am up too, essentially. I am not PAing another show this season and I don't even know if I'll still be in Portland, come the 2013/2014 season. This could be the end of my time with this company.

I find this ironic because just last night I had a dream where I was a stage manager at Artists Rep and (somehow) the Artistic Director's daughter. As a part of my dream, Allen picked me up and spun me around like I was still a little girl, smiling up at me and telling me how proud he was of the woman I had grown-up to become. Then I came to work to discover that he was letting me go.

I don't have to explain to any of the theater people reading my blog how quickly the theater becomes your home, your sanctuary. How you find the place simultaneously sacred and everyday, so comfortable yet so essential.

When Sofie and I took a trip to Ashland to go see some shows at OSF, an usher came over to us during intermission and asked me to take my feet off the back of the seats. I apologized to the usher profusely and then turned to Sofie, shaking my head at myself, and I said: "Gosh! I should so know better!" Sofie just said, "Don't be silly, we live here. We can put our feet up all we want."

I'll miss this home, when the day comes to leave it.

We've only got 9 minutes to save the world

Well, actually, I've got nine minutes until the end of rehearsal, which is thrilling.

I am going home soon and then this weekend and I am going to do some things I've been meaning/needing/wanting to do for, I don't know, a month. Last time I had a day off was before Duck for President went into tech and now I've got a whole 24 hours without work coming up on Sunday.

Here are some things I'm going to do:
- Vacuum my room
- Clean the bathroom
- Go to the post office
- Do some actual grocery shopping
- Do my laundry not covertly at the theater but for realsies at a laundromat.
- Watch Sons of Anarchy
- Sleep
- Sleep
- Sleep

Thank you, baby jesus, for a day off. I know it's not till Sunday, but I swear to God: I can TASTE it.

Auditions!

Here we are and honestly, I have no idea how I got here. I mean, I know exactly how I got here but I feel like I am on the edge of great big precipice and there are these two guys behind me and they are so ready to jump and I'm so not ready and they grab my hands and I don't try to get away but I also am not anywhere near leap-happy and THEN:
Auditions.

So here I am, falling rapidly into God knows what, sitting in the production office at Artists Rep, surrounded by quietly focused actors who are all here because they want to be a part of this ridiculous thing that I think I'm maybe going to be able to pull off.
Part of me feels like I'm lying to them all, honestly.
And part of me feel like maybe I'm doing the bravest thing I've ever done.
And more of me is terrified. A lot more of me.

So, yes: AUDITIONS.

In Rehearsal

Anniversary

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of this here little blog. I was going to blog on the day to commemorate, but I got home from rehearsal after midnight and the time stamp would have been all wrong.

Four years ago, on the first Tuesday of November, I sat in the student center at Bennington College and watched the election returns come in. I'd started my evening having dinner with Rebekah at the town house, where we all sat around a scared and worn wooden table, listening to the radio, contemplating escape plans in case of a McCain/Palin win. Rebekkah and I then filled our water bottles with vodka and trundled on down to the student center. I'd been antsy all day because, as a California native, I was used to getting real information as early as 4pm. In Vermont I had to wait... and wait... and wait.
I (and the majority of my school) sat in the student center for four hours. We ate french fries and buffalo chicken and drank our not-so-subtle-or-secret drinks. Two Bennington students had worked on Obama campaigns in different states and they both had mini war rooms set up: tables covered in papers and laptops and cell phone chargers to ensure they knew everything as soon as it could be known.

At 11pm, the polls closed in California. The big projection screen was still for a moment and then the room exploded as CNN announced President Barack Obama as the winner of the 2008 election. People screamed, cried, kissed, jumped up, fell down, wept. Someone had, while all of our backs were turned towards the TV, rolled a gigantic wooden wheel directly outside the student center and were now crouching behind it, shooting off fireworks. We poured out of the building and ran to our homes, clinging to one another and flying: "Yes We Can!" and louder still, "Yes We DID!"

Hours later, when the entire campus was drunk but still quietly riotious, someone brought a trumpet to Commons Lawn. I was outside Kilpat and in the dark, I heard them begin to play "God Bless America." Then, like some kind of magic, I heard the voices. All over campus, people began to sing along to the trumpet. From 1st street and 3rd steet and Commons Hall, voices rose up everywhere, singing. That was when I cried that night.

All of this is to say: today marks anniversaries, personal and public, big and small. Today is for choice and voice and, hopefully, a little more magic.

Wonderland

There are a few things that can immediately snap me back to being 7 years old at 270 Bahr Dr. One of them is when my room (or, I guess, my house, now) is what my mother called "Wonderland."
Wonderland means it's not just tided but CLEAN. Incredibly clean. Like: bookshelf organized, clothes folded in drawers, bed made, carpet vacummed, desk drawer's meticulous. When the bottom of your closet holds nothing but nicely lined up pairs of shoes.
My mental image of my childhood bedroom Wonderland Clean is always of it at night, after dinner. (This probably because getting my room to Wonderland Clean took an entire day...) I'd come back to my room and eaaaase the door open ever so slowly, and stand in the doorway to look at my room sparkle by the light of my reading lamp. I always had a reading lamp in my room, even before I could really sit up in bed and read on my own, because my parents read to me. And when your room was Wonderland Clean, there was no chance you'd (or, really, my father) twist an ankle on a misplaced toy. So you could move about just by the light of the reading lamp.
I liked to set just one thing out when my room was Wonderland, whether it was a book or a toy or a dress I'd redicovered that day, buried in my piles of laundry that I wanted to wear tomorrow. Having the one thing out seemed to announce that everything else wasn't out. Like you would notice, "Oh look at how clean this room is! There is only one stuffed animal on that bed!"

Wonderland Clean is hard to come by when my life is as busy and full as it is now, and is often. When I feel like I need to be home but can't afford the Wonderland Clean, I go for something similar.
Tonight, I came got home around 12:15p. The house was dark, the jack-o-lanterns's candles already burned out on the porch. I've had an awful day and I knew that I need to sleep. Before that though, I quietly put my dirty clothes in the hamper, tided my dresser and re-made my bed. I hung all my jewelry up on their hooks and took out my bathroom trash. Then I took a shower and put on clean pajamas, right out of the drawer. I turned down my bed and put lotion on, I repainted my toe nails. I turned off my overhead light.
I may be poor and I may be tired and I may be totally unsure of a lot of things in my life but I do know this: when I am a clean body in clean pajamas nestled in clean sheets in a clean room lit only by a reading lamp, I feel safe.