Um. Hello? So I haven't posted in close to a month, haven't had a chance to check my dw-circle or lj-flist in close to a week, and I can't actually remember the last time I had time to have a look on tumblr. I have no idea what's been going on in fandom for a while. And I haven't had any time for writing or vidding or anything else, either, which makes me very sad, because I feel like some creative part of me must have shriveled up and died.
Basically, the production of Company I've been stage managing has been the most hellish and emotionally abusive rehearsal process I have ever endured -- the director was a purely toxic force of mismanagement and insecurity and outright obstruction of my ability to do my damn job, he treated the entire production staff and occasionally the actors like shit, and the producers did nothing constructive to step in and help until waaaay too late in the game, at which point they caused as many problems as they attempted to solve. Miraculously, the show itself is not a disaster -- the cast is great, the show looks fine, and while it's not a Great Production, it's good enough. We finally opened last night, and while I have no real confidence that the director will actually go away and leave us the fuck alone, at least the production has now become manageable. Seriously, I have never been in open battle with a director before in my life -- it runs counter to everything I've ever learned about stage management, not to mention my own personality, and I absolutely loathe confrontation -- but it's taken every ounce of energy and strength of will I possess to keep this fucking show afloat in the face of his utter horribleness as a human being. I've been in a very bad place emotionally for the past month. It's just been awful.
On top of that, I moved into a new place (in Brooklyn), which is nice enough for now. The bedroom is small but the apartment is quite nice, the neighborhood is decent, the landlord is awesome, and my roommate, though a bit anal about certain issues, is a perfectly nice person. And the rent is very cheap. I can't imagine that I'll live here for more than a year or so, but it suits what I need right now.
And I started the new job at the Kids' Theater (which I guess will be my shorthand for it on this journal), which has been stressful in a new-job sort of way, and I'm still anxious that I'll somehow be awful at it. But I really like all my coworkers and I'm hoping that I'll be able to manage the kids; my biggest issue so far has been my inability to really focus on my job there due to the dreadful time and energy suck that has been Company. It should be better now that we're open, but I just want this fucking show to be over so that I can have my life back.
Yesterday, while I was setting up for callbacks at the Kids' Theater, my dad called me to let me know that my grandmother is in the ICU. Her heart had stopped Friday night and though they resuscitated her then, she has requested they not do so again. No way of being sure when the end will come -- it's whenever she has another coughing attack or something like that, which could be a matter of hours or days, a week or so at most. I had to go straight from Kids' Theater to a final Company rehearsal, but when we released the cast for their dinner break before the show, I stole ten minutes to step outside and call her in the hospital. She was completely lucid and matter-of-fact about everything, chatted with me about what the situation was and that ninety-two years is too long of a life anyway but she's had a good one, and though she's never been the most affectionate of grandparents -- she's kind of a crusty old dame, and never had much use for kids, though she liked us well enough because we were her grandkids; her own children and grandchildren call her Dottie instead of Mom or Grandma -- she then spent like five or ten minutes reminiscing about that time she took me to a pumpkin patch when I was little without telling my parents about it, and the weeping willows at her old retirement community in New Jersey and how she'd smoke a cigarette while I played under them, and, god, saying goodbye to her left me a complete and utter wreck. I think I scared the shit out of the Company drummer when he happened to find me sobbing like a child on the sidewalk outside the stage door. So then I went inside and sobbed in a bathroom stall instead for a while, and then I washed my face and went back into the theater and ran a show. Still waiting on my dad's phone call with the final news. Could be today, could be tomorrow, could be next week. I'm not ready for it.
So that has been the rough summary of my sucktastic month. My LJ paid account lapsed and I'm not bothering to renew it, since the only thing I care about there is the icons I'm now losing. (Still checking flist for the handful of friends who haven't switched over to DW, of course, but that place is like a dead zone lately.) I'm dropping out of X-Men Big Bang; managed to sign up for Yuletide and Festivids despite have precisely zero interest in either, in the hopes that by December I'll have regained some kind of creative drive, and I need to remember to sign up for Secret Mutant before those sign-ups close. But I'm not really here right now.
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