I opened a show this past Friday! If you are in the Phoenix area, it runs one more weekend and you can get tickets to see it HERE. It has been almost 2 years since the last time I was onstage. And while I directed a non-Shakespeare show in 2019, I think the last time I ACTED in a non-Shakespeare play was before I became a mom (when I was pregnant with my first)! So QUITE a long time. It has been so exciting to be part of the process of bringing a new play to life and to work with so many wonderful people again, but it has also been a bit of a roller coaster!

The most challenging part was how being back in rehearsals threw our family schedule for a loop. My kids definitely had to deal with some dysregulation and big feelings about mom being gone at bedtime since the last several shows I’ve done have been lunchtime theater shows with most of our rehearsals taking place at home after they were asleep! I have had to remind myself that while this is hard, their dad is perfectly capable of making sure they are well taken care of and that it is good for the kids to see both their dad and I taking time to do what we love and what fills our cup.

And this process truly has filled my cup. I forgot how much FUN it is to be in a rehearsal room. My husband and I have worked together so much that we have a VERY good sense of what one another will likely choose to do in a given scene. We still surprise each other when rehearsing once in a while, but it’s not quite the same as what I’ve experienced with this cast being back in the rehearsal room. I love the collaboration and I had so much fun watching adjustments being made in real time to the script based on moments working or needing something a little different in the rehearsal process. I’m also very curious to see if anything evolves after this step in the playwriting process.

I have also learned that I still have plenty of self-work to do. Nothing makes you re-evaluate all your body positivity work like suddenly throwing yourself back onstage in front of an audience where the literal point of you being there is for them to watch you. Things I thought I felt neutral about in daily life I suddenly very much had strong feelings resurface around. And it pains me to say those surface doubts paled in comparison to the rest of what was being said sometimes by my internal self critic. It is shocking how taking the break I did allowed so much time for imposter syndrome to creep in. “You’ll never be able to learn all these lines. They aren’t even in iambic pentameter. That was a stupid choice. They are going to regret casting you. You are so clumsy. You look so weird doing that. You are such a bad mom what made you think you could add this to your schedule?!” etc. etc. etc. But I also got to experience so many moments where the self work DID make a difference and where I got to dismiss those doubts and enter a beautiful state of flow and collaboration. And here’s something else really valuable that I learned-

Just because you haven’t exercised a muscle in a while doesn’t mean it doesn’t work anymore! It doesn’t mean you are back to square one! Work is never wasted. And while it WAS harder to learn lines this time around when I’m so used to working on texts I am super familiar with or having a little more margin in my day before 3 very different kids with very different needs plus a host of other life things were constantly present in my brain… I did it. I learned the dang lines and I made the dang time and so far we have gotten through 3 shows just fine and our cast held onto each other through any bumps in the road to tell a really interesting story. Here’s hoping the next 3 shows continue to boost my confidence that I have rebuilt not only the memorizing “muscle” but the creative part of my brain in general, and can keep using and strengthening it for many many years to come.

Most of all though, I am reminded of the same biggest lesson I took away from one year of trail running. Community is my greatest motivation. I am thankful for my diverse intersection of communities- the artists I got to work with and those not involved in the show who came to see it, the people in my running community and even dear friends from high school and college who took time from their very busy schedules to come see my show, and even the people who couldn’t make it to my show but let me know their support throughout this process. It brings me back to this John Green quote, which seems a very fitting place to end this entry: