CHICAGO: And so it begins again... Jeff and I are living in a cute studio apartment in the heart of Old Town. We are just 2 blocks from the theater. It’s amazing to me how quickly one can feel “at home” somewhere new. We have been transient for 8 months. My motto: Home is where you hang your toothbrush.
REHEARSALS: Already our experience is so different from our last job’s easy schedule. We are in rehearsals for 3 weeks for 5 different scripted shows. Right now I am responsible for learning 27 sketches, 5 songs, 10 blackout bits, and 5 new improv shows, with more TBD. It’s loads of work and more memorizing than my thick skull can retain. I take Advil every night.
I wake up each morning at 6AM, run on the treadmill while listening to lines or music from the shows. Start rehearsing at 10AM with a one hour lunch break, go home somewhere around 5:30PM, eat dinner, work on lines while I eat more, and then eat more, and then sleep. Ah stress eating. Then I get on the treadmill all over again and try to burn a portion of the billions of calories that are forming onto fat on my ass.
Have I mentioned... we are also doing a murder mystery? Calling it a Murder Mystery is fitting: Since it is in the workshop phase, the script changes constantly, so it feels like you are being murdered by the embarrassment of having to perform something you have learned 5 different versions of. And there are so many mathematical components involved once the audience chooses who will be murdered (flashback scenes, murder scene, confessions, order of interrogations, different staging for each, etc...), that it is an endless mystery to the actors. I have all the faith in the world that it will be worked out, at some point. We have done two previews for “invited test audiences”. It’s like participating in Market Research, but not on the easy end. The feedback has been helpful... but exhausting as it keeps changing.
FREE TIME: We had a few days off to explore the great city of Chicago. We went to an exhibit called YOU! at Museum of Science and Industry. It was kid-fun! You could hold on to these handles to take your heart rate and then a giant heart on the wall would beat based on your BPM. We also put our hands under a special light to see our veins. Ewwww gross! And we tested our brains with puzzles and our eyes with charts. I realized that I need to get health coverage and see an eye doctor ASAP. All in all it was a fun day. We also took in a show... Million Dollar Quartet. It’s a musical based on the day that Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis were all in Sun Records. It was great! And we ate great Chicago pizza!
We fly to France tomorrow! Whoo hoo! And after 3 weeks, there are a few things I have learned:
1. My brain is more capable than I give it credit.
2. Jeff Hopkins is a terrific husband.
3. Too much Starbucks makes my left eye twitch and my boobies ache.
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