WOW possibly the worst day ever

Today, was so nerve-wracking and frustrating and compounded with a lot of different things and overwhelmed by a lot of shit, I spent a good hour or two crying, which was actually great because I hadn't had a terrifically good cry in years. Juan was with me while I was crying on the street, so I'm sure about a dozen Spanish people thought we were breaking up. ha.

Then just as I was getting finished crying in my room Liam (one of the b-boys helping me with video stuff) came knocking on my door. Embarrassing.

Anyway, why so frustrating? Our first scene (made by the U.S. team) was conceived and re-conceived already a few times, and the latest incarnation was very much influenced by conversations with the Belgian Valerie who is handling video for the whole show, and who supposedly know how to use Isadora. She showed us how she can manipulate video and images in projections, changing their positions and sizes as we went along. The other day we had a really frustrating rehearsal because essentially all rehearsal was moot without being able to be in the theater with the projector in the correct placement. Today finally we have a chunk of time in the theater, the projector was in place (sort of) and suddenly we discovered different limitations to the video and use of Isadora. I srsly wanted to blow my brains out. We go into tech in 2 days, our first show is in 4 days, we have not DONE this scene for real, EVER, and what the fuck am I doing in this place in the first place? I had one of those crazy like flashback-life-collapsing moments... I was remembering all those stressful times with the WOW company, working in a foreign country, and being with a tight group of amazing artists, and how much LOVE is born out of working in the theater, and how heart-breaking it is to have art be so imperfect and ephemeral, and how much people grow apart... I think about so many people I've met who really changed me or moved me, and now I have no idea where they are... And on and on... I feel so lucky, and so cursed, and just so full of intense like.... I don't know what to call it.

I have always worried about how intensely I experience my emotions and thought that I'd pretty much had it under control, but today I felt like I was back being 23 years old again. This is a difficult project led by people who have never led such a project before -- the raw energy and magic of th ensemble is so immense and ineffable -- and there seems to be no way to aptly capture this thing, this amazing, magical wonderful electricity of a group of people (a community) -- this thing that is the reason why people do theater in the first place, and the thing that also disappoints people so much and causes them to leave the theater.

I think we have some possible solutions to the video problem, but again I feel uneasy at being responsible for video images when I am not a video or visual artists perse. Oh well. So it goes in Madrid.

I will leave you with some pics of the stupid night we had last night, going dancing in an Irish pub, and tonight, this amazing bookstore around the corner, which is also a cafe and a bar and a club at night.




Ok time to edit more video.