Well. That happened.
I'm going to break with tradition and provide a bit of a review of what happened last night, as I've been receiving emails, texts and calls from many folks, gently asking how it all went down. It's not every day that you perform a five hour monologue for the first time in your career.
The short answer is that it went great—I feel like a grand experiment and gamble has yielded fruit. If you could have caught me Friday, when my energy was starting to flag, you'd never expect we would get to where we did. Brecht and Barnum tightened and clarified significantly in performance yesterday, clocking in at svelte 75 minute lengths that felt full and rich. I had a little difficulty maintaining energy through the dinner break, though that improved once I got onstage for Tesla--I ran that one a little hot, and the extra laughter drove it a little longer than it should be, but nothing disastrous. Hubbard, the dark heart and endnote of the evening is the most extreme of the pieces and felt prepared for—it felt complete.
The four do speak to one another differently when they are on the same day, though it is hard to say now what all the ramifications and connections are. The important and vital thing that moved me was feeling and experiencing that the stories lived and breathed with each other, hung in space next to one another and made something larger than each component piece--it is what we had hoped and worked toward for the last few weeks, and it was a real bright moment in my career as an artist to experience it realized on stage.
Now I am taking two days off from performing—my voice is fine, but I am sore all over my body and I could use a little break.
2:12 PM