i bet you made it to the show because there were MANY MANY PEOPLE there. friday night there were about 150, which was sold out, and saturday night there were EVEN MORE. wow. we hadn’t expected such a turnout. i guess people are really anxious to hear some swearing.
jason’s father passed away on thursday night. mac called and told me, and i called jason to express my condolences and he said he was on his way back to spfld to do the show. this was quite a surprise. i just don’t know how he did it. i can’t imagine having the ability to function at all under the circumstance, much less trying to be funny. he arrived at 8:30, and the show went on, and he was great, and it all went really, really well.
the final sketch was one that mac and jason did together, called “howard hopped the a-train,” and it’s about a guy names howard riding the A Train, and jesus is there with him and it’s funny but also poignant and meaningful and we were all backstage crying while they were doing it and like i said, i just don’t know how jason did it.
and then there was last night. jason wasn’t there, and so mac filled in for him. mac was fine, he was TERRIFIC, as a matter of fact. we rehearsed the bag lady sketch a few times and it was never perfect, but it was never really perfect, anyway, and i told him it’d be fine and he kept saying that it was so great that i was doing this with him and well i really didn’t have an alternative, did i? plus i knew he’d be great.
and he was. he didn’t miss one single line, not anything, it couldn’t have gone better.
until i got to the part where i started to go crazy, when i was revealing my true, bag lady-self. i stand up and talk about how bag ladies talk to themselves and scream at people on the street, and then i said “and rummaging through garbage cans,” but then, quickly, i completely forgot which ranting speech i was giving, and i had absolutely no idea where i was or what came next. so i said “and rummaging through garbage cans” agan, and then i said it again, and one more time, and i tried to sound looney every time because i FELT quite looney at that point, and i wondered if i’d keep repeating “and rummaging through garbage cans” till the audience finally gave up and went home.
it felt like i said it about a thousand times, and a couple of times i squeaked out little squeaks and turned to mac, who i’m sure was utterly horrified, and then i said it again…and then, thankfully, somehow i got out of the loop and said another line, and then another one, and i realized i knew where i was and i wasn’t going to explode after all.
but by this time it felt so incredibly ridiculous, and i kept thinking GRACE YOU ARE SUCH A TOTAL MORON! and i was thinking about how we’d worried about mac, and he was PERFECT, and meanwhile i was still saying my lines and i felt like bursting into laughter because it was so absurd, and i kept going, choking back the laughter, till i finally got offstage and laughed and laughed.
afterwards, a friend of mac’s who i didn’t even know said she didn’t know that anything was amiss, so it was very fortunate that at that point i was supposed to be crazy and i guess it didn’t matter that i sounded retarded.
whew.
after the show, things felt very anticlimactic. we tore down the set but there wasn’t really anything to tear down, and then most people said they were going home to bed, so i went home, too, and i felt wide awake for the first time all day.
so that’s that. i liked doing the show because there was no pressure on me to do anything except being in the show; i didn’t have to worry about the publicity or any of that stuff that i hate trying to do by myself. also, going out with the cast after a performance is infinitely more fun that going out all by myself after a show of my own. last new year’s eve, after my show at the hoogland center, i went to my sister and brother-in-law’s house, and they had all been to see me, but it just wasn’t the same at all.
maybe we’ll do this show again since there were so many tons of people there. but i know jason isn’t thinking about planning anything right now, and neither is mac.
life, please, enjoy every moment of it, because you don’t know how much time you have.
i’m even trying to enjoy sunday night even though i always hate sunday nights even if i don’t have to do anything on monday, and it looks like my monday is going to be pretty easy.
ok then,
grace.