So, yes, my Sunday night performance went great … Thank you for everybody who wrote in to ask me!! And for those who are engaging in a sort of Irish brawl throughout my comments, complete with Irish brogues – I love that! So here is a brief update:
Every time I perform the piece, I gain confidence in it.
It is a far different experience to perform your OWN words as opposed to somebody else’s. I have found, so far, that the experience for me is an odd mixture of confidence/certainty – and UTTER NEEDINESS. I believe in the integrity of the piece, I enjoy doing it, and yet … since I wrote it, and since it is about an event in my life … I have a tendency to FREAK OUT with nervi-ness before and after-hand. I feel like a raw freakin’ nerve.
But this is neither here nor there.
The Irish Arts Center is a great venue and I was pleased to be a part of their lineup.
My parents were in attendance (I have been blessed, in terms of parents … truly blessed!) – my aunt Regina, her friend, my friend David, my friend Barbara ….
I was so glad to have my Peeps there with me.
And … let me just tell you … to hear these waves of laughter coming back at me, while I am up on the stage, sometimes a wave of laughter, sometimes a thunderclap … There is literally nothing else like that sound on the earth. It is the best sound in the world. (Well, maybe a baby laughing is THE best sound …. but an audience bursting into spontaneous laughter because of something you, the actor have done, is a close second). It feels AWESOME.
It was the kind of night where … I was dropped off at home by my friend David, and I had to just sit, quietly, in a chair in my room, and just sit there. Living in it. Reveling in it. Not bustling about, not writing, not distracting myself with TV, or whatever … Just sit there. Just BE.
More to come. More to come.
The piece has LEGS, dammit, it has LEGS! So I will see where it takes me.
I guess you could say that (and I say this with humility, and also, a kind of weird shyness) – that I’m proud of myself.
Yes. I am proud of myself.
Good for You! I’m sorry I couldn’t make it but my life isn’t my own.
As for an Irish brawl in the comments, Hawaii is where they sent the illiterate Irish…
wee jim, i offers yuh the olive branch, and yuh blindside me instead. true i missed many an english class……..couldn’t stand the name of it. so i spent me time kickin the shite out of the morans, all 20 of ’em…highly literate, for the drunken criminals they were. is that why you couldn’t make the lasses show? still in jail.
maybe, while yer watchin reruns of seinfeld on the prison tv, you’ll see the episode on the proper use of exclamation points.
Red, I’m glad all went well for you.
and i’d still like to see it on the site, or perhaps an e-mail.