A Diet of Olives and Wine

A lacrymatory or lachrymatory is a small vessel of terracotta or, more frequently, of glass, found in Roman and late Greek tombs, and supposed to have been bottles into which mourners dropped their tears.

Opening week, and with four days to go we're at 90% of the "break even" point. And that is very nice. Because we deserve it. Because people are going to love this play. As I do. As the cast does. As does Rome itself! Probably. I am a vessel of terracotta or, more frequently, of glass filled with equal parts dread and joy. 

Adding to this is the decision I made to accept a job offer this week. It was a very gentle recruiting process, and a soft application process, and it just suddenly happened. Thus, the experiment to take six months off to write and create became three and a half months off and grabbing the first thing that dangled itself in front of me. 

It will mean this play will have filled the gap entirely.  It will go on my timeline as how I filled the space between jobs. 

The pressure of setting up for the gig today kind of smothered me. Turns out when people are paying you, it's not to wake up at noon to play Fortnite for a few hours, eat hamburgers with the cat, and roll out of bed in time for rehearsal. I miss my old life. Yesterday. 

Rehearsals last week were full and active. The costumes are coming together, and we're seeing more and more of what the show is going to look like. I'm in expansive, refining mode, and sometimes yell things like, "It must be this way! It is my vision!" These are not things I used to say aloud. It's probably good that I'm being humbled by a new employer. 

We're having an excellent time working jokes and changing lines. An actor changed the line "Do you remember that night she came to you, father, wine-drunk and glistening?" to wine-crunk and glistening, and we decided it was better. We just smiled with our eyes and let it happen. 

Another added "yogurt" to a list of Greek things that aren't any good. It should have been in the script the whole time. We behaved as if it had been. 

An actor removes another's belt during a love scene, and how we howled when it hit the floor with a most unromantic THUD. 

I am happy, and the cast seem like Famous Stars of Filmland to me. An actor presented another with a custom t-shirt printed with his most difficult line. It was a very beautiful gesture.  

Tomorrow I have to meet with the man who trains people to use the light board. He says it is easy. I am likely to perform this task during the show myself. 

We did a promotional photo shoot. There's a tiny public park with giant columns on Pike St. They look like they're from the fahkin pahthenahn. A frequent location for engagement photos.

Got there early to discover they, the columns, had been "tagged" by a villainous Vandal. As well, those rental bikes were everywhere, the ones you can just leave anywhere. I labored to drag them out of the shot, bike after bike. The wheels don't roll if you don't pay.

There was a chain link fence in the shot. Someone had draped abandoned laundry on it. I would have had to make bramble jam to get to them, and who knows what surprises the pockets held. So, I left them in the hopes they would add a pleasing, colorful blur to the background. There were coffee cups to kick and copper-colored pigeons to shoo. And then we had a set. The actors showed, and we did it. It was cold but worth it. We left the place cleaner than we found it. I was able to crop the graffiti out of most of the shots.

One of the actors was freezing and I lent them my Sicilian coat. They all looked like Famous Celebrities of Filmland to me. They all seem famous. It all seems like history, archival.

It is beautiful, this feeling, this process. Stressful and magical. I am a fool to have returned to work. An employable fool.

But it will help pay for the next one. And possibly the next.

We open in IV days.