Life in Art.

Yeah, I'm not pretending that my title isn't based on the Stanislavski memoir, My Life In Art. Read that MoFo of a book sometime. Then read War and Peace. Then tell me you still don't understand Russian culture (you will, by the way.)

I'm sad today because two sad things happened. This Guy died, and This Place closed.

I guess the This Guy was going to happen eventually...and he had a good life and made a lot of people laugh so I'll mostly just miss his stand-up specials and guest appearances.

But the This Place...it makes me nervous and stressed out about my future in the American theatre. It was in my list of Top Places that I *really Really* wanted to work someday. This Place had just won a regional theatre Tony award...did "crazy" things like incorporating puppets, music, circus, mask, and spectacle into their shows...and was basically a theatre company where, if I were to start a company, would have been Just.Like.Them.

The production of Carmen that they brought to the American Repertory Theatre blew my mind...and opera doesn't usually blow my mind.

I'm stressed out because if a huge company can't make it work...after 30 years...how the fuck am I going to?

Sometimes the world feels really small, and little victories (like doing a toe hang on the trapeze on Thursday for the first time in 5 months) are huge and make you feel like you're part of something huge.

But other times (like now, and a lot, recently [except for the toe hang moment]) I feel like the world is impossibly big...and I'm half drowning most of the time...and my knee still isn't solid enough to climb the figurative (and literal, actually) ropes to higher ground. I need to get acts put together. I need to nail auditions. I need more clients to train so that I can pay my rent without stressing out while doing the things I actually love.

I want to do amazing things. But I feel so unfocused at the moment.