Tuesday, June 03, 2008

we almost lost the show...

Well, we almost lost the show. In the end we had a financial catastrophe (with which the season has been replete) and yesterday evening was our deadline to get the money. We didn't have it and I had to go so far (as an official with LAByrinth) to tell Rebecca we were not going to open next week. This was an unpleasant phone conversation; she did not enjoy this news, and I felt at once like a producer giving necessary bad news and an artist getting badly fucked (sort of, by myself!) All too complicated and all too sort of, vaguely, self-hating. Then the money came through in a complicated arrangement of different beneficiaries, I was still in the office, but I was too depleted to feel utterly great. I just felt wrung out; like I'd failed even though we succeeded in the end. How wonderful that we succeeded in saving the show, but how horrible that I hadn't succeeded in doing so without all the sturm unt drang.

Also, the most complicated part, is that I have begun to feel like the show is actually on the right track. This is a difficult assertion to make because I direct under a vaguely mystical belief that failure is seductively elusive; merely lurking somewhere slyly covert in the future, never apparent enough to actually face and combat until the war is actually lost. But the work has been so much fun (perhaps because it's been a drug-like relief from fear of failing financially; which fear reminds me, in it's potency, of my sister, suky's, expression: "dead stomach." This is what your life is like when your stomach hurts so much, almost physically, that you wish you were dead. I've had this for about two weeks. That's the terror in which I've been living. Horrible.) But, the actors seem to have embraced the notion that we could just race along and stage the little bugger in 4 days. Which we did. Since we have 10 rehearsals before a public performance, I determined (since this is a farce) to give them structure. So, I staged, and on the fifth day we ran through (as ordained by the Lord!) All right. Next five on the way! Sigamos con sangre, sudor y lagrimas!

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