From Jean-Michele's blog:
travelmonkeys: Au Revoir and Ego Check
We've been festivaling for 10 days: performed 2 different monologues over 6 performances; Mike's also performed short improvised bits at 3 different late-night events; we've stayed up until 4 AM every night and then gotten up early to go to morning radio interviews and technical rehearsals and workshops and panels; and we've both got slight tattoos from all the stamps our right wrist has endured. It's been good. We are tired.
One thing I will not miss is being called The Wife. Even in painfully-politically-correct Portland, you wouldn't believe how many people have addressed me as such. Mike was quite the festival darling, earning reviews with ecstatic headlines like this one. Then at the festival after-party, people would surround Mike to bask in his greatness. More than one asked him "Is it hard being so amazing?" Seriously.
Whenever he introduced me he'd take care to call me his director and say my full name. And 9 times out of 10, the response was, "Oh! You're The Wife!" One woman even told me she'd assumed I was some kind of "clingy groupie" or maybe a handler hired by the festival to make sure Mike had everything he needed at all times.
In a more substantive conversation about the monologues with another woman who was actually quite lovely, she emitted a gasp of surprise and told me it had never occurred to her that I might be as invested in the work as Mike was.
Grrrr.
On to Seattle to work on Yoga Bitch, where no one will call me The Wife or be surprised that the director is deeply obsessed with the art.
1:28 PM
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