opening night in Vienna

Three curtain calls. And magenta tulips. All of which totally took me by surprise, because the audience was so quiet through the whole performance that I was convinced I wasn´t reaching them. Barely a ripple of laughter at the funniest parts, none of the spontaneous bursts of sound and applause that I expect when the work is really hitting people.

"They weren´t silent, they were rapt," said Kim (my director). "And as you saw, they were most definitely not ambivalent about the clapping."

"Hell yeah," Riley (my set designer, tech director) chimed in. "I had to bring the house lights up to get them out of there - they weren´t gonna stop."

"Audiences here pay attention," Albert, tech director of the Kosmos Theater, told me. "We listen. Then we clap."

Three curtain calls. On opening night, when some things were ragged, when I had a raging stomachache right through the show, when I was still in the space of nailing the cues, the movement, certainly not at the pinnacle I reach for when I forget myself and everything else and simply become the work.

Wow. I´m so grateful. Feel so blessed.