fourteen yellow rosebuds

are just beginning to unfurl in the vase in our dining room. Fourteen delicate, multi-lipped mouths, sipping the air.

My director, Kim, brought them for me yesterday, when we began work at 12 noon, for the show at 7.30pm at the Oakland Museum. She didn't know I have a thing for yellow flowers. Or that yellow roses are my favourite of all yellow flowers. The happy serendipity of her choice lit up the stage, where we put them while we ran cues and tech. Consoled me during the inevitable minor meltdown of show-day overwhelm. Warmed me from the table in the Green Room just before I went backstage for the show.

the day after a show

is time in suspension. I move in slow motion. I see and smell and feel what is around me. Trees, ground, sky. Everything that vanished in the high-speed blur of the past few days, the craziness of pre-show frenzy.

I recollect the details of last night, that didn't quite register in the moment. This morning, lapped in the deep luxury of lying in bed at 7am, instead of springing up, mind ablaze with anxiety and urgency at 4am, as I have for the last 2 weeks, it settled into my conscious mind:

We got a standing ovation last night. Our first standing ovation for a staged theatre performance of Migritude.

Wangari Maathai in Berkeley, Oct 30th!!

Kenyan Nobel Prize Laureate, Wangari Maathai, is my hero. And she's going to be here in the Bay Area, on October 30th, to promote her autobiography, Unbowed.

7:30 PM at First Congregational Church of Berkeley (2345 Channing Way at Dana). This evening is presented jointly by Cody’s and FCCB; a $10 donation is suggested to help offset FCCB’s costs, but no one will be turned away for lack of donation.

Arnica gel

is my new best friend.

For the floor burns on my elbow, the bruises on my hip, the bumps and swellings on my ankles, knees, shoulderblades. The movement I do for Migritude gives me a whole new level of insight into the physical cost of being a dancer or actor. Every day, a new surface of my body comes into unfamiliar, sometimes painful, contact with the studio floor - and lets me know about it.

rehearsals

exhaust me in a particular way that nothing else ever has. Voice, body, mind. I come out of them dazed, sometimes unsteady on my feet, unable to think, much less tackle production and business tasks. All I want to do is sleep. I've been trying to figure out why. No insights yet.