it's a magical world

I'm well into Company rehearsals now, which means I will be doing my best to title any and all posts over the run of the show with appropriate lyrics. Or inappropriate lyrics, as the case may be, as we discovered in music rehearsal yesterday that the version of the libretto MTI issued the cast contained the original 1970 lyrics to one particular song that are, um, incredibly offensive by 2012 standards. (Every revival since has updated that particular line to be less awful.)* But anyway. I'm having very, very mixed feelings about this production. On the one hand, the cast is fairly talented and the script and score are fantastic (duh, Sondheim) and I'm sure it'll be a good show. But there have been a lot of...behind the scenes difficulties already, and the director is kind of getting on my last nerve already, and believe me, less than a week into the process is WAY to early for that to be happening. This theater company is already displaying a STRONG resemblance to my Least Favorite DC Theatre, and just, ugh. Apparently any show I work on in the autumn is destined to make me miserable. But while I'm of course stressing out about it, I'm somehow...much less stressed than I was in this situation last year. I guess I have more confidence in my own abilities as stage manager or something, because while I'm irritated, I'm far less worried about the prospect of "failing" somehow. Like, I know this process is going to suck, but I also know I'll get through it and not make a fool of myself, because none of the problems that have been cropping up are in any way caused by me, and I've been rolling with the punches pretty damn well so far. So, yeah.

I've found an apartment! In Brooklyn, which I'm less thrilled with -- nothing against Brooklyn, just that it's a bit inconvenient to my life at the moment. But it will make my commute for Company WAY shorter, and I'm not way out in the far reaches or anything. The apartment itself is really quite nice -- smallish bedroom, but it's in a lovely townhouse and it's very well maintained and my roommate-to-be has lived there for ten years already, so I have a lot of confidence in the situation. She's also basically a clone of my favorite roommate from DC, personality-wise, which is awesome. And it's less than a five minute walk to the subway on an express line. The neighborhood itself is kind of lower-middle class, VERY diverse and family-oriented, so a bit shabby but very safe -- lots of grandmothers chatting on stoops and kids playing on the streets, which is so very stereotypically old-school Brooklyn. And the rent is...much, much cheaper than I was expecting to have to pay in NYC, which definitely makes up for the commute. I move in October 1. Here's hoping it works out.

And I've made it to the final interview stage for two different jobs, both as resident stage manager for children's theatre companies. I'm a HUGE fan of Theatre for Young Audiences and will rant at length about the importance of arts education for hours at a time, so either job would satisfy my inner bleeding-heart-liberal leanings far better than working in commercial theatre does. One pays significantly better (like twice the salary for roughly the same amount of hours per week), so realistically, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that one; but the other does arguably more important work (within the NYC public school system), and their hours would enable me to pick up additional gigs in the evenings/weekends, which the first would not. So they both have their pros and cons. Of course, now I'm sure I've jinxed myself and will be rejected from both. We'll see.

I've been utter rubbish at keeping up with fandom lately -- well, I do read my flist/dw-circle regularly, but tumblr's been far more sporadic, and I haven't been working on anything creative at all. Once my life settles into a routine rather than a whirlwind, hopefully I'll be able to get back into a fannish mindset. I did watch the latest Doctor Who, which I felt entirely MEH about, and the new Downton Abbey, which I have not seen a single post about which DISPLEASES ME GREATLY because it made my heart go all a-flutter and Branson is my new favorite and why is no one else squeeing about this?

*The lyrics in question: in the original version -- "I could understand a person if it's not a person's bag / I could understand a person if a person was a fag"; now updated to "I could understand a person if he had to go away / I could understand a person if he happened to be gay." Oh, 1970. (The composer/lyricist who wrote it, Stephen Sondheim, is himself openly gay. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. Mostly, oh, 1970.)

I quit caffeine about four and a half months ago. This has largely been a good decision, I think. I feel more alert, I'm sleeping better, I'm even slowly losing weight. But man, this is one of those weeks when I DEEPLY regret it. My show of great awesomeness finally closed Sunday, and yesterday afternoon I went into tech for a show I'm light designing. It's a small community theater, way less stressful than the large professional theater I usually work for; and I'm just lights, not stage management, so again with the lower stress. But I'm still running frantically up and down ladders every afternoon and then teching at night, and between this and my day job, I leave my apartment at 7:30am every morning and don't get home until close to 11pm at night. So not very stressed, but TIRED. And uncaffeinated. The only thing that's keeping me from cheating is the vivid memory of two straight weeks of withdrawal headaches when I originally quit. (I am not exaggerating. If I'd ever doubted that caffeine was a legitimate drug, that disabused me of the notion right quick.)

But man, I would like a Coke Zero right now.

Also, the XMFC/Inception fusion has passed 45k words. WHAT THE HELL. It's now officially the second-longest fic I've ever written. It needs another good 20k to slide into first place (currently held by my last TARDIS Big Bang), and I don't think it'll get there, but I have been completely unable to guesstimate this fucker so far and really, all bets are off. I know how much more plot is left, but word count, pfft, no clue. I'm mostly just boggling that I've written 45k words in a month, because seriously, what. And at some point I will actually get to the end and realize that now I have to find a beta and actually revise this thing, which, oh god.

I have some Sports Nights icons now. I seem to be going through a textless phase of icon-making. Anyway, I think I shall use this as my directing icon, because it is the control room and Dana is kind of like a director, in a TV news sort of way. I wish I could give orders straight to my actors' ears in the middle of a play soemtimes, that's for damn sure. Anyway, last night was the first rehearsal for one of the two short plays I'm directing as part of a new works festival in June, and oh, bliss. It's been so long since I've directed my own damn show, I almost forgot how happy it makes me. I mean, first rehearsal, so some awkwardness, and getting the cast sorted out, and flying by the seat of my pants as always, but that's part of what makes it fun.

And tomorrow I'm leaving work at noonish to get on a plane and fly home for Passover, which makes me very happy indeed. I've missed NYC. Family shall be, as always, stressful and argumentative and endlessly entertaining, and there will be seder, and possibly catching up with old friends, and a day and a half off of work, and respite from the general suckiness and loneliness that has been my life in Chicago of late.

I think, secretly, the best part of moving to D.C. will be taking me that much closer to home. Not my parents, necessarily -- we get along much better when we only see each other a handful of times per year -- but I really am an East Coaster, and more specifically a New Yorker, at heart. Chicago's a great town, it's entirely possible I'll move back eventually. But it's not home.

In other news, I started reading Kushiel's Dart a couple of days ago, and I'm loving it to bits. Although every now and then it hits me that I'm reading incredibly kinky smut at work. :D

Man, you know it's been a really bad winter when you look at the 10-day weather forecast and get ridiculously excited about the fact that the temperatures are all in the upper 30s or even 40s F. I've started taking WALKS again. I might be able to wear my lighter jacket once or twice in the weeks to come!

Christ, this winter has been obscenely long and miserably cold, even by Chicago standards. Remind me to never move any further north than this.

In other news, last night we had the first read-through for the new works festival I'm directing two plays for. Nifty. My plays, they have their flaws, but they sound a lot better when read aloud by actors, which makes me more optimistic about this than I have been. (They're new works. They aren't exactly polished yet.)

You know what I finally figured out today? My entire cast is straight. That's eight men, five women, not a single homosexual among them. In professional theater.

That's...statistically highly improbable. And just wrong. I am the gayest person in the rehearsal room. SO WEIRD.

I know, it probably says something about my psyche that I get weirded out being in a room full of straight people, but whatever. At least our costume designer flames brightly and fabulously. There must be some constants in life.

Hey, look! An actual posting for an actual theater-related job that I'm actually both somewhat interested in and qualified to apply for!

It's been a really long time since one of these showed up. My excitement actually might even overwhelm my hatred of writing cover letters. And the likelihood that I won't actually get it.