Thoughts, on Pi(e) Day

Have you ever seen someone start to smile in the middle of a yawn? I find it mildly terrifiying. It's like when you watch rodents yawn-- their little jaws just seem to unhinge and you wonder, for a quick second, if that little mouth might not stretch wide enough to engulf the animal's own head. Or yours, for that matter. And there's an accompanying little glimmer in their eyes that just drives that nightmare home. Anyway, that's what it's like when someone starts to smile while they're yawning. The opposide (that is, a yawn in the middle of a smile) is not quite as unsettling. It just makes the someone look kind of goofy for a moment, but you can forgive goofiness. Giant unhinging rodent jaw with little eye glimmer? Not as much.

Tonight marks the halfway point of our run of She Loves Me. The Hales typically celebrate with Pie Night, when Linda provides delicious pies for the cast (I requested blueberry to even out the number of orders for creme pies-- chocolate mousse, lemon mirengue, etc). As luck would have it today, 3/14, is also national Pi Day. If that's not killing two birds with one stone, I don't know what is. We're going to top off the evening by watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That doesn't really tie in with Pi or Pie, but it's part of the plan regardless.

I've had recent opinions forming about the process of performing a show as a single cast. On the one hand, I'm grateful and happy to be single cast because 1.) my part is not enormous. I do not have to be quite so concerned about losing my voice, hurting myself, getting sick as other members of the cast. 2.) this run will pay for a great deal of my trip to England this summer. No complaints. 3.) after my Christmas Carol experience, in which I might as well have been single cast, I like having my own costumes, my own set schedule, being responsible for my own part, and attending my own tech/dress rehearsals/performances.

However, I have to say, I think the theoretical benefits of single casting do not come to realistic fruition. Running a musical seven times a week is exhausting, even though my part is, as I have said, not enormous. I can't even imagine how my full-time working castmates are handling their Real Life jobs and carrying the weight of a show on their shoulders to boot (without even the option of an understudy!). Sure, it's one thing if doing the show each night was your job, but around here, that's not the case. Okay, so maybe a theater will throw their cast a bone and cast understudies. Why not double cast, then? I, for one, would find it very difficult to decide if being cast specifically as an understudy would be worth my time, even if I was promised at least one show a week or whatever. Frankly, I'd be terrified to be single cast in a role bigger than the one I'm playing at the moment for a run longer than a month or so. I don't know. These thoughts are disjointed, and they're not even very detailed. I've got a whole stack of opinions still stashed away. It's probably not worth going on about anymore.

Things I Need to Ween Myself Away From
1. Most Haunted and ghostly things
2. Diet Coke
3. TV on DVD, specifically Arrested Development
4. Day dreaming
5. Dying my hair all the time
6. Nevermind, I like Most Haunted and ghostly things too much to be weened.
7. Same goes for Arrested Development
8. How about I just stick to unleaded Diet Coke exclusively?
9. #s 4 and 5 still apply.