Sunday, July 6, 2008

Like a heart needs a beat.

I'm used to oddball dreams. With a mind as restless and an imagination as overactive as mine, they occur often. I usually wake up, roll my eyes, WTF myself, and carry on with my day.

Last night I dreamed that I got a call on my cell phone from the director of Wicked. Elphaba was out and none of the standbys or understudies were prepared. Could I get to the theatre and go on? I stammered that I'd only seen the show twice. I know no numbers, no cues, no lines, no choreography, no nothing. Certainly an unprepared standby would be a better bet than me. He said get to the theatre. I arrive, assuming there would be people there to help me. I was pointed in the direction of a black dress and some green paint. I tried my best, but every time I would slap some on, it would melt right off. Finally I found a darker color and did a botch job, panicking more and more that I still had no direction on what I would actually be doing once I got that whole verdigris thing under control. Someone came and briefed me about the scene I would enter into - I was expected to wing it from there.

As I rounded the corner to the stage, a boat drove by and splashed water all over me. The makeup was gone and I was trembling with fear. Unprepared, and now not even green, how in the HELL did anyone expect me to perform? No one cared. I was thrust onto stage, fully aware that the audience would probably stage a mutiny when they realized they would be stuck with an untrained white girl for the duration of the performance.

Here's the part of the story where you expect me to report my initial shortcomings followed by a sudden explosion of talent and energy. It saddens me to report such combustion never occurred. I just sucked. Plain and simple. The whole performance, I got worse and worse. And while I have no intention of getting bent out of shape over a DREAM...I don't know. I've felt like a bit of a failure eversince.

I blame hormones and general discomfort.

1 comment:

Tricia said...

Dude! Don't let your dreams get you down. That's just your head f-ing with you. I feel the need to analyze your dream though:

I used to have show-up-late-for-class-and-there's-a-test-and-I-haven't-actually-been-to-the-class ever type of dreams. and the general theme in both is a feeling of being unprepared. What are you feeling unprepared for, love?