Good News!

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but every day I feel more and more confident about my monologue. When I did my umpteenth run through of the first third of the script, I improvised, using my script as a structure. I added words comfortably, lots of pauses, different voices, gesture and emotion. Like an actor. I was performing, and I hope I can do that onstage. I’d be very proud to be as I was last night.

But I keep hitting ‘blocks.’ I know all the words, but I have trouble with the order. I hope if I just keep going over it and over it every day as I did today, I will get it. I’m going to take or ask their stage manager to be, a prompter. 

I like memorizing. Each time I do a run through, I make sure all the type on the page is black. Then, as I go through the script, when I hit a block, I make the like where I blocked, red type. One day, I will get through the whole thing without any red type. Then, when I go through the same process with the ensuing third, I will rehearse both thirds on every run.

I love this experience. I’m a person who loves the process, but not the product. I don’t have stage fright; I have off-stage fright. I’m terrified of interaction with people who have seen my shows. I love being onstage; I am truly terrified of being around strangers. That’s why I have friends coming to be protectors.

When I start a run, it’s like getting in a roller coaster car. I start and I hope the words will come and I will remember all the turns/transitions. It’s exciting right now. And it’s exciting to be having this whole experience. Submitting my script set me a challenge.

I got a call from St. Paul’s yesterday. I must go to a Parksville clinic to have bone density tests. That earns me another free ferry ride to the island and back. I now have two of those. The other one is for a pacemaker review. And now I may be getting a free trip to Vancouver to go to an interview for a study about old people, with HIV (I think). I always say yes to studies to payback a little on all the help I’ve had from our medical services.

Every time I go to Vancouver, I sleep over at John and Bunny’s, where Sheba is welcome, and we have dinner together. It’s rather amazing what I feel for them. Fifty-three years of solid friendship.

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Last night, to be honest, I became nervous about the monologue. I was making a lot of mistakes in my runs through, and I was thinking about cue cards, prompters and failure. But I felt all I could do was go to bed and hope for the best for today.

When I awoke this morning at 6:00, I lay in bed and decided to try the monologue in my head and I got through the entire thing, in perfect order, with no mistakes. So, I got up, came to my computer here at my desk, and did it again. I’ve got it! I have the first third down! I am truly amazed and excited. It took 3 days and scores of runs.

I had a meeting with the festival directors on Zoom this morning and learned several things. For one thing, that my new ending isn’t as strong as the original ending, so I’ll fix that. I also found out that we’ll be doing two performances of the festival, one on a Fridy night and the other the next afternoon. And finally, bless these two men, that they have more confidence in my monologue than in the three others. My confidence keeps growing!

Whenever it gets cold, as I walk the forest trails
I often see Ribbon Ice or Hair Ice, it's ice that
forms as water is extruded from broken branches.