Day 23, Sat June 22
The day before the TO DIE IN ATHENS reading. Casting is finally completed, the script is done, the music is done. The work we have to do now is about stitching the quilt together.

Chris and I go to the theater and continue working through the rest of the show, stopping for every little thing that doesn’t make sense to us – every note, every stage direction, every transition. Hours. Some minor frustrations: a piano with sticky keys, a melody we thought we knew that we don’t, a section which, in retrospect, perhaps I could have cut. But we make it through. We psych ourselves out and get ready to start again.

When it’s done, we start the show again from the beginning – with me reading all the lines, and him playing all the music. I find myself getting overwhelmed by the language and actually acting, more than I have in years – trying to throw myself into Oedipus, Medea, and the others. I overdo it and have to pull back – I don’t have the vocal training to read, at full energy, and sing, for this long. But I wish I could. We stop a few times but not much.
Even with some stop-and-start it’s under an hour twenty.

Notes session and we’re done. We leave the theater after what feels like a lifetime. We are both exhausted, like running a marathon twice in a day. The show I was supposed to see this evening is sold out – the party I was supposed to go to is nearly over and miles away. No brain for anything else. We make it to the grocery store to buy food for the actors for tomorrow, and that’s it.

Collapse. Well deserved. Our of our hands.