I had a whole blog post planned out in my mind about a book I read recently and how it connects to my current show, Two Gentlemen of Verona. I was going to write it as soon as the baby went down for a nap and then I got a voicemail from my mom, "Oee, call me when you can." My immediate thought was, "something terrible has happened. I talked to My sister this morning, so I think she's okay. My dad? Mom didn't sound like she was crying though."
It turns out something terrible has happened, though nothing deadly. Shakespeare Santa Cruz, the regional theater in my hometown, is closing. I worked with this company for two summers and have friends still working there. I did not go back this summer, yes, but I had hoped that I would go back again. Hope is too light a word: I planned, I prayed, I feverishly wished for the day I could return as an Equity stage manager. I imagined a future in which my family came with me to Santa Cruz each summer and my children knew my hometown, lived with their grandparents, felt the splendour of summer days in the redwood forest and summer nights on the beach. And we could do all this, me and my imaginary future family, because I could work somewhere I loved. I put so much thought into that future; I was sure the only thing between me and it was time.
I don't quite know how to characterize this loss. My breath catches when I think that I have already seen my last show in the glen. I imagine that forest filled with candes at the company's traditional end-of-season vigil and I want to cry. I have cried today, more than once. I have lost a part of what I was aiming for, my friends and I have lost our artistic home, this country has lost a place of beauty and magic.
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