agita and the play about the baby

I have been balled up like a fist ever since I got back into town. Austin was good. It was needed. It, unfortunately, reminded me yet again how much I miss the city that feels most like home. Add that to the New Year and all that resolution nonsense implies, every man I’m attracted to is a traffic wreck of emotional unavailability, I haven’t worked on a stage project in three months, and coming home to find a few strange bugs in the bathroom (I haven’t seen any more yet, by the way) in an apartment for which I technically no longer have a lease, it is really no wonder you find me here with yet another case of ripping insomnia, as I am apparently stark raving neurotic. I need to get back to the gym on a regular basis – it’ll help my mood; it’ll help me sleep. Maybe then I’ll be up to the task of finding myself the next part, whatever that might be.

And since this is where my head has been, it only makes sense that I would treat myself to a light and delicious meal at Flor’s Kitchen (I officially love this place) and would be in the mood for a silly period comedy at a theatre that feels like home, as well. I needed to laugh and I needed a sense of community, and The Mandrake at Manhattan Theatresource did not disappoint. D’s direction again proved solid and delightful, and the cast was great. The show was fun, but more than that, it’s about just walking in there, how everyone is so friendly and genuinely glad to be there, how it really doesn’t feel like a networking fest at all and I get to see friends.

D and I go way back, to the tune of 12 years. There’s a lot of history there, and the fact we have managed to patch up our friendship after a couple rocky years in Austin says a lot. It is something for which I am continuously grateful. Then there are the volunteers milling about, some of whom I’ve auditioned with. The cast lets out and there’s Steve, whom I haven’t seen since we wrapped our show for Fringe Fest, and Ridley, whom for a moment I was having trouble placing (embarrassing, since we worked on the same week of the Estrogenius Fest in October, but sometimes it’s hard keeping all these people straight in your mind). Everyone’s hanging out in the lobby, actors and their friends, thank you for coming, we’re going to get a drink, blah blah blah, but I’m craning my neck because I don’t see Jeff yet. Where’s Jeff?

I worked with Jeff in 2004’s Estrogenius Fest on what I call the stoplight play though the name was considerably longer than that. Jeff is a wonderful actor, very giving on stage, so much fun to watch, and is as hard on himself as I am on myself about craft. I was lucky enough to have this man play my husband in a piece Catie had written so beautifully about Mitch’s and her difficulty in getting pregnant. Considering that I will more than likely have problems with my own fertility, it was one part therapy and one part dirty laundry and two parts character and script. Trying to memorize one of Catie’s monologues could rip a soul apart if her words weren’t so damned gorgeous. She's very fond of lists and you have to figure out the logic behind them if you hope to remember them at all, and by the time you've finally got it memorized, it's burrowed inside of you. It was just the four of us there for a little over a month: Catie (pregnant) watching and interjecting, Mitch directing, and Jeff catching everything I threw him out there and tossing it right back to me. The way the piece ends, the phone rings and it’s the doctor, and the audience doesn’t know if they’re pregnant. And we as actors didn’t have that answer, either, although the way we played it was I thought maybe I finally was and Jeff thought I wasn’t, and the stakes were ungodly high.

Finally, Jeff comes out. He sees me from what we consider a green room area (it’s really the office of the theatre) and he tells me to get back there so I do, and there’s the usual big hug, lovely work tonight, how are you, how were your holidays, stuff you say when you haven’t seen each other in ages. He says, “Have you seen the book yet? We have an ISBN number!” and I’m laughing because there isn’t an ISBN number, but there’s the copy of the book – it’s actually the proof back from the publisher, the copies aren’t out yet – the original one act plays from 2004’s Estrogenius Festival at Manhattan Theatresource. Whenever a play is published, it is traditionally done so with a summation of where the show was first mounted as a production with the names of the original cast and the characters they played. Well, there we are in print, Jeff and me. “I was looking at that monologue today, and I thought, bless her,” he says, laughing.

And back behind us in the media room where Mitch is master of the domain, the screensaver on a huge flatscreen Mac monitor cycles through photos of their baby, some shots with Mitch, some shots with Catie, some just of the little cherub solo (who looks just like Mitch, I think, but with Catie’s dark eyes and hair), and I say, “You know, I know it sounds silly but I feel like we were kinda part of that,” and Jeff looks at me with eyes wide, still ringed with eyeliner from the show, and says, “We WERE that. We were right there.” He’s standing there with our book in his hand, rumpled as actors often are after a show, looking at me straight on and awestruck, and I’m clutching my program and purse as this huge brown-eyed baby montage goes on behind us in an otherwise darkened room, and it occurs to me – more than a year after our show closed – that we had a baby. It's not all about the audience or the applause (God knows it’s not about fame or fortune), it’s about the act of creating, and here was the ultimate act, and I was part of it – we all were, all four of us.

I’m walking out, having bailed on the drink offer, and Riley’s standing on the corner of Waverly and MacDougal with his hands in the hair of one of the volunteers – she had been up for the part opposite me in You Look Really Hot but Julie got it (love Julie, love her) but I can’t remember this girl’s name – and Riley’s obviously got his hands full (literally), so I keep walking, turn down Waverly and head over to 6th Ave. It’s a mild night, calm, cool but not unbearable, and I take a deep breath because this, in my hands like the hair of a lover, is why I got back on the plane to New York. If even for a little while, I’ve gotten my second wind.