It Makes My Heart Hurt

I’m in the Berkshires doing a production of SWEENEY TODD, playing the Beggar Woman. It’s getting a lot of press.

Which I’m staying away from.

I’m supposedly getting WILDLY varying reviews, many supposedly stating “facts” that conflict from publication to publication.

Which I’m staying away from.

I wouldn’t even know what is involved in the above two paragraphs but people insist on telling me.

T’ain’t none of my business what you think of me .*

Especially with this show. This is my fourth time inhabiting this specific universe, my second time living in this particular skin. And I have worked painstakingly, passionately and joyfully to illuminate the human spirit in 72 measures and 6 spoken lines. But who’s counting?

Not everyone is ready to be illuminated…or do the illuminating. Aww, fuck it. I'm just trying to do my best. Everyone is...I guess. Maybe I wish some people aimed their best a wee bit higher.

This is where my heart breaks.

A very important reviewer attended last night. REALLY important. Some TURDbucket told me on the street an hour before.

Really? REALLY?

Would I like this V.I.R. (very important reviewer) to appreciate my little light? Yup.

But today, there are 100 senior citizens here. I am blinded by the reflection of their spectacles. An audience of 100, on limited income, who paid money to sit in a darkened room and perhaps have their lives change. They are here for us.

And they are who I’m here for…bitch. (Remember, never end a sentence with a preposition…bitch. (Okay, that one was just for fun.))

I actually burst into tears over this. Full-on fuck-all tears. To the lovely sound girl. She just checked to make sure I was okay. Three scenes later, she’s still worried. I repeat, she’s lovely.

I think I’m getting my period.

I had a colleague on this show recently drunkenly tell me that people find me intense and that I take on too much.

Yup. And that’s okay. I work. More than most. And I have a 75% re-hire rate. The people I dig honor the way I loom and illume.

If you’re here just to read your reviews or collect a paycheck or suck-up, I am pretty much not interested. And I may mock you. Behind your back of course. And in the most joyful manner.

Whoopsy.

That’s all. My heart hurts. In the best of all ways. Learning, learning good things.

*Of COURSE I read my reviews when a show closes. Have to sell myself, right? A girl’s just got to sell herself. The opinions of others just hold no place in my world until the sell-by date.