I Would Like to Report That I Am Thriving (Deranged Edition)

Oh hello. WTF. I am currently in Los Angeles having the most important professional experience of my entire career.

 

Let me say that again, because it sounds fake even to me:
I am at the Pasadena Playhouse working on the world premiere of my new adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon. 

 

Which, yes. I wrote. Like… I wrote it. 

With my human brain. 

And now real actors—gorgeous, talented, emotionally available unicorns are speaking the words and ideas and character arcs out loud while I sit behind a table laughing and crying and pretending I know what I’m doing and not, say, internet-searching “what does the playwright do during rehearsal besides spiral?”

 

To be clear: this is all, objectively, the dream.

So naturally, my psyche responded by committing seppuku. Because, let's not forget: I am me. 

 

At one point, mid-week, I had the very fun realization that maybe I’m “not good enough”… Or maybe I am simply a woman who has been expertly trained—by the ambient noise of culture—to hate myself on a cellular level despite a decade of therapy, a trip to literal Siberia, and several well-intentioned journaling phases.

 

Because here’s what’s wild: nothing around me suggested I was failing.

The work is good. The room is phenomenal. The people are extraordinary.

And yet my brain was like "Yes, but what if you are secretly a fraud and everyone is too polite to say so?"

 

So let's review. Within the span of one week, I have:

• Had a full-body emotional meltdown (positive) hearing my writing spoken aloud

• Had a full-body emotional meltdown (negative) hearing my writing spoken aloud

• Navigated sitting “behind the table” while internally whispering "they’re going to find you out..."
• Experienced an existential crisis so vast it could qualify for its own zip code
• Gotten my period (obviously. the uterus always clocks in for chaos) and "pulled" three other uterus-having humans off their cycle because I'm a trend setter
• Been pulled over by a traffic cop for driving too slowly, which I did not know was illegal exactly, but apparently is if you are radiating panic at 37 miles per hour along the 101.
• Been interviewed for a profile piece in the Los Angeles Times and photographed with legendary American playwright (and Alec's idol) David Henry Hwang, which is the kind of sentence that should belong to someone with much better posture
• Watched my computer die spectacularly! Forcing me to deal with the not-so-genius CARLOS at the Genius Bar, and spend $1400 I definitely don't have on a replacement, while whispering “this is fine...”

 

All of this while my husband was visiting for five too-brief days, during which he demonstrated the patience of a saint who has accepted that he married a woman who will—at any moment—combust over art and printer settings.

 

*

 

And THEN—because the universe is frankly a little aggressive—I remembered: Oh. This is what always happens right before you level up. I have been here before!

 

The migraine during the SATs.

The car dying on the way home from the hospital.
The sinus infection the day of my West Side Story audition.

It’s like life leans in, cracks its knuckles, and says,

“You want this next version of yourself? We'll just… see about that.”

 

Because the true test is not whether or not you can survive the chaos, but whether or not you can you remain yourself inside the inevitable chaos. 

 

Can you still show up?

Can you still do the work?
Can you still breathe, and pivot, and not light your entire life on fire because one thing went wrong? 

(or twelve things went wrong)? Somewhere between the traffic stop, the hormonal spiral, the computer funeral, and the deeply surreal experience of standing next to David Henry Hwang while trying not to dissociate, I realized I wasn’t falling apart. I was expanding. I guess... it just feels identical sometimes.

 

Because, dear reader, growth is not cute!

Growth is not a soft-focus Instagram reel with a voiceover about “stepping into your power.”

Growth is ugly-crying in a borrowed car while calculating interest rates.
Growth is showing up to rehearsal anyway.
Growth is letting yourself be seen before you feel ready.

Growth is saying, I am terrified, but I am not leaving.

 

There’s a psychological term for this —anti-fragile. 

 

When Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term anti-fragility, he was trying to name something that didn’t exist in our literal or psychological vocabulary. We have words for things that break under pressure ("fragile, breakable"—think of a wine glass shattering), and we have words for things that hold steady or bounce back ("robust, sturdy, steadfast,"—think of a levy or damn during a hurricane).  But what Taleb realized what that we did not have a word for systems that actually improve when they’re exposed to adversity, stress, pressure, or volatility.

 

Taleb describes this as a gap in the language with real consequences. 

Fragile clearly means something that’s harmed by shocks. 

Robust describes something that resists them. 

Resilient covers systems that can recover after being knocked down. 

 

But in all three cases, the best possible outcome is staying the same.

 

The central premise of an anti-fragile system is that it doesn’t merely survive difficulty. It actually improves, and becomes better because of it. It refers to systems that strengthen under pressure. A useful way to picture the distinction is as a simple triad:

 

Fragile: weakened or damaged by adversity.

Robust / resilient: able to withstand adversity or return to baseline, but unchanged by it.

Anti-fragile: made stronger by adversity.

Strengthened by the adversity.
Sharpened by the friction.

 

The exact opposite of the part of me that wanted to run.

 

*

 

So yes. Wow. I am in Los Angeles, living my dream.

 

And I am also crying in parking lots, buying emergency laptops, bleeding on schedule, and learning in real time how to stay present in the life I worked so hard to build.

 

Which feels about right.

 

Because maybe the "level up" isn’t the success at all. Maybe the level up is the ability to withstand all the good bad joyful heinous and identity-melting things that come with "success," and not talk yourself out of it.

Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be at the Pasadena Playhouse, trying to act like a person who belongs there, while also? Quietly becoming one...

Internal monologue: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Brigadoon: Day 1

 

No words. Because *every last word I could ever have*, is in those pages. 

Day 1. Let’s go. Och aye. 

 

John Steinbeck wrote a letter to his publisher when he submitted East of Eden. The letter was then used as the book's dedication. It captures what I feel: 

 

"Dear Pat,

You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, “Why don’t you make something for me?”
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, “A box.”
“What for?”
“To put things in.”
“What kind of things?”
“Whatever you have,” you said.
Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts- the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full.

John"

 

I contain multitudes. And antibiotics.

Mirror selfie at the Four Seasons

Last week, I was a VIP guest at the St. Andrews Society of Los Angeles for Robert Burns Night at the Four Seasons of Beverly Freakin' Hills. I was rubbing elbows and seated beside luminous Scottish humans (Brian Cox, ffs), dressed in black tie, celebrating art, culture, the Scots language, poetry in general, Robert Burns Poet Laureate of Scotland and of course HAGGIS.—in Beverly Hills amongst very fancy socialites, like a person who definitely owns matching luggage.

This was my second Burns Night of the year. And before you think I’m getting too fancy, this is the part where I tell you that I was wearing the same dress that I donned at the New York Burns Night at the University Club. It has pockets. It was also? rented. 

I was in town because the St. Andrews Society is sponsoring the Pasadena Playhouse’s world premiere of the Brigadoon I have rewritten, and I was tasked with giving a 4 minute speech plugging our lovely show for a room full of Scots. Did I know I was giving a speech? No. Did I write the speech during the salad course on the back of my menu? I did. 

I also was tasked with getting Tyne Daly to and from the event. There is very little Tyne loves more than poetry, and we were looking forward to getting gussied up and having a three course meal in a fancy place (even IF the world is burning down! Especially if the world is burning down!)

My gracious and wonderful host—not busy himself that evening— offered to let me borrow his extremely fancy car to drive to Tyne’s, pick her up and escort her to the Four Seasons, and drive home in style. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

On my way there, I realized I didn’t feel as comfortable driving as I wanted to (living in New York, I only drive occasionally, and when I do I always need a couple of days to acclimate). Do I really want to be driving back at night? Do I really want to be driving TYNE DALY?! No. 

Al + Tyno: thrilling crowds since 2010

New plan: 

1. Drive to Tyne’s. 
2. Park somewhere safe. 
3. Take an $11 taxi to the Four Seasons. 
4. Taxi back to the parking spot. 
5. Drive home. 

After an absolutely splendid evening (my speech went well, thankyouverymuch) I return to the parking spot in West Hollywood. I am in black tie. My phone is at 11%. It is Saturday and pitch black. 

To my horror: I quickly discover that the beautiful borrowed car—a BMW worth the GDP of a modest principality—was GONE. 
Had it been stolen? 
Had it been towed? 
Who was to know. 

I call Alec. He manages to brilliantly figure out the car has indeed been towed, encourages me to get a taxi home with the remaining battery on my phone, and retrieve the car in the morning. 

The next morning I stood not-so-proudly among the detritus of Los Angeles’ most panicked citizens in the fluorescent underbelly of Hollywood Tow Yard, wearing yesterday’s eyeliner and the facial expression of a Victorian orphan. Somewhere nearby a printer screamed continuously, like it too had made terrible choices.

with Brian Cox because of course

I handed a man $280 in cash to retrieve a vehicle whose cup-holders alone were worth more than my first apartment. Juan slid my $1 in change beneath the bulletproof glass—the kind of glass that has absolutely witnessed screams, threats, tears and at least one thrown Monster Energy Drink—and smiled warmly.
 

“Welcome to Los Angeles.”

Thanks, Juan. I hope you never have to grow as a person.
 

 

I returned to my digs and fell asleep instantly, the way you do after your nervous system spends six consecutive hours pretending to be a raccoon in a kitchen (alert, sweaty, and morally compromised) because cortisol is real I guess, and my body had decided we’d run a full Fight-or-Flight marathon about a luxury sedan that, oh, that’s right: did not belong to me.

Two hours later I was at urgent care being diagnosed with a UTI. The doctor said it with the same calm tone one uses to announce light drizzle. I considered asking the Urgent Care Do: can humiliation infect kidneys? If I wrote this into a play the dramaturg would gently suggest we ground the stakes in reality.
 

This is the perfect metaphor for life:


reciting poetry with Tyne Daly → municipal consequences → bladder betrayal.

 

I'm pretty sure I have learned by now that life is mostly just being glamorous for 90 minutes and feral for the remaining 23 hours of the day.

And yet, in that same week, I:

• finished a draft of my brand new play adaptation (news to come) 
• Fully cast the world premiere of Brigadoon (!!)
• work-shopped another project I passionately love
• froze in negative-twenty-degree New York weather so thoroughly my thoughts crystallized

All to say: growth, apparently, does not present as a tidy montage. 
It presents as tonal whiplash. 

Because I am both Four Seasons gal and Sherman Oaks Urgent Care gal. 

I contain multitudes. And antibiotics. 

"Take My Hand and Let's Go Roaming..." — A New Adaptation of Brigadoon

Friends, I humbly share with you all: I made a thing. 

Well. I RE-made a thing. 

And what an honor it is. 

 

Inspired by the giants of Alan J Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and with the support and encouragement of their families and estates, a new Brigadoon is coming in to the world, and it is making its world premiere in my birthplace, Los Angeles, at the Tony-Award winning Pasadena Playhouse helmed by the man who was there for my first American job Artistic Director Danny Feldman.

I love Scotland. I love the theatre. I love music. And I love telling deep human stories.

Many of you who have been readers since the beginning know that when I was 18, a few months after my father died, in a swirl of grief and of an unnameable sense of hope, I picked up my entire life and moved to Scotland. 

I stayed for years (held and nurtured by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and slowly, a part of me healed and grew to be ready to hope again, love again, and join the the world again.

Scotland and its people held me, uplifted me, with its music, language, and poetry; its stark beauty, its searingly unsentimental insistence upon human resilience. The country and its culture continue to be an active part of my life to this day.

How fortunate am I that the art form I love more than anything in the world can provide a vessel for a story I couldn't keep to myself a moment longer. This is both an old Brigadoon— one you'll remember, recall and joyfully celebrate legacy; as well as utterly new— a deepening and enrichment made just for a new generation of theater-goers to appreciate anew.

I've never been prouder of any creative offering I've participated in, in all my life. I've also never been more honored to bow deeply at the altar of Lerner and Loewe-giants of our art form and say:

— "take my hand and let's go roaming..."

See you next season at Pasadena Playhouse. 

 

Self Portrait: 19.MAR.15

In My Life: Griffith Observatory

Griffith Observatory
Los Angeles, California
©2015

Grammy Pep Talk Glory

So here's the thing.

You all know how great my chums are. 

I sort of gush (and gush and gush and gush and gush) about them ad naseum...

Whatever.

I'm very choosy about my pals, ye see.

And why?! 

Because they are real life, in-the-flesh flecks of human awesomeness. 

I have managed to surround myself with treasured BFFs who are 

     smart

     fun

     hard-on-me in the good ways

who are also 

     ambitious about their own lives

     high-vibration-y

     creative

oh, and 

     smartypantses

who, just by being them, and by being in your world,

remind you that YOU ARE A ROCK-STAR-A-SSAURUS.

Basically? 

I have some pretty kickass friends.

Friends that know when to give you a pep talk. 

Friends that know you need that pep talk in a video...

      so you can play it over and over again...

                  ...and potentially turn it into a compilation...

BEHOLD. 

I've Been: California 2014

Three Sisters

Jet-setting

Being 'Aunt Al'

Getting to know the tiny little new Silber: Charlotte.

Putting Hannah in owl pajamas
Playing softball!
General frolicking
Jumping on the bed
Reading stories
Then,
     singing Hannah to sleep

Force-feeding my nieces [total critical] musical theatre

Doing some serious eating with my big brother

Thoroughly inspecting [what feels like] every single mall in Northern California

Shame about the view...

Playing in the pool
Sunning by the pool.

Climbing up the mountain and drinking and entire bottle of champagne whilst taking in THIS view [see right]

Walking up mountains
     and through forests

Surveying the “LAND!” my brother bought

the view from the ferry

Driving to Alamo with my former student, Jonathan...

Eating THE most amazing meal with his entire family

...playing bocci ball
...and WINNING!


Making friends with a gorgeous South Carolinian family on the San Francisco Bay ferry!

Giving directions to tourists and feeling “very” San-Fran-local

The team.

Going to the dentist. In San Francisco. Because that’s where my dentist is.

Walking across downtown San Fransisco…literally


Just… ya know…launching the West Side Story CD (Eeeeee!)


Reuniting with so many friends made last year!

Singing "I Feel Pretty."

In the presence of Rita Moreno

And freaking out
then
making-out with Cheyenne Jackson
...in the women’s bathroom…

ALL AT TWITTER HEADQUARTERS…

....where I discovered that everything is named after a bird... Cool.


*

Love is Strange premiere

Flying to LA for a quick hello

Having lunch in LA with people I saw 4 days ago in NYC, because, friendship.

Getting "real talk" from my second family.

Driving to Cheyenne's house
drinking smoothies
falling in love with Jason, his fiancé, 
     and Billie Jean, his dog. 
...then singing along to ourselves on the CD in his living room. (Mature.)

Then supporting the gorgeous Cheyenne at the premiere of his new film “Love is Strange.”


Staying in Michael Arden’s cabana… while he is in London, because, friendship.

Taking excessive photographs of his cat, Eloise (because evidently I have an addiction to taking cat photos...)

Business: with the sea.

Driving in the city in a Ford hybrid LIKEABOSS...

Getting long overdue Manhattans (because Manhattans are delicious.)

Going to the beach with amazing friends.

Having my (now annual) “business with the sea.”

Brunch and drinks
and Brunch dinner
and Brunch and dancing
     with a lot of amazing pals, old and new.


Making a lot of new friends.
Making a lot of 'lemonade...' 

Our Girl Band: Mermaids of Babylon

Loving my birth city. Loving it big-time. 

Seeing the “For the Record” and loving it.

Partying hard and late and dancing LIKEABOSS in the LA

Photobooth-ing
   and
Photo-bombing

Sunshine.

...a shit ton of sunshine.

Business with the sea...

Again in California
My knees dug in the shore
Pacific waters called again
And asked my soul for more

But there's no more to sacrifice
My heart is just a sieve
The land has stopped, sea appeared,
I've nothing left to give.

 And they say the tides can pull you
 No matter where you flee.
 It's life you must attend to

 So the waves won't let you be.

       No, the waves won't let you be
       When you have business with the sea...



 

La Ronde - LA

La Ronde... ...and ronde and ronde again...

With your permission m'lady, I'd like to "La Ronde" again*...

About to embark on another exciting theatrical experiment! In early 2011 I participated in the Off Broadway revival of Hello Again by Michael John LaChiusa based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play, La Ronde, and I am so thrilled to announce I shall be joining one of my oldest friends and collaborators Michael Arden in his contemporary, Los Angeles-centered adaptation of the the piece as "The Actress."

Here is the info: 

* * *

Recently, Charlie Sheen indicated via Twitter that he was most definitely planning to attend a night of La Ronde, the adults-only LA theater experiment set for July 18-22. Not bad for a pilot production most people around town have yet to learn about...

THE PLAY:

Originally written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897 and first printed in 1900 for his closest friends, Reigen, also known as La Ronde explores and scrutinizes the sexual morals and class ideology of its day through a series of encounters between pairs of characters (shown before or after a sexual encounter). Drawing from characters across all levels of society, the play offers social commentary on how sexual contact transgresses boundaries of class. In this production we take a look at these morals and ideologies as they reflect modern American culture.

THE EXPERIENCE:

One evening in July (18-22), people receive instructions to show up at a certain location in Hollywood not knowing who will be in the play, what's going to occur or where they might end up, simply knowing they must "Leave your inhibitions at home!" Only 12-14 people will watch each night’s performance, staged at at ten different locations where a cast of about a dozen actors, dancers and performers will put on the provocative live-performance pastiche.  

In this site-specific pilot workshop production of La Ronde, streets, insides of houses and places unimaginable become stages for a series of events not soon forgotten: a secret, sexy party planned just for you. A post-show soiree directly following each performance allows the audience to meet and mingle with the cast, creatives and fellow audience members. Make a friend... Take one home...

The small, invite-only, audience becomes a voyeur in the scenes, sometimes inches away from the performers. Utilizing storytelling through the mediums of music, dance, theater and even film, it is our goal to transport the audience literally and metaphorically through the private lives of the characters invented by Schnitzler and reinvented in 2012 Los Angeles.

* * *

*So, to off-quote the great Danny Kaye  from The Court Jester,

     "With your permission m'lady... I'd like to La Ronde again..."

In My Life: Los Angeles

 

pacific ocean, los angeles, california

2009

I've Been

home.

having one crazy-ass January.

traveling to Saltspring Island off the coast of British Columbia

...and working with my absolute artistic idol and realizing that one of the many miraculous things about growing into yourself is when you face your idol and realize that that equally respect you. 

making peace with her.

     and him.

          and London. 

Saltpring Island from the sky

reprising my cabaret at Feinstein's and the Catalina Club in LA!

having 3 hour deep and meaningfuls with Jason Alexander over Greek food

walking along the Pacific coast with my mom. There is no place like home.

at the LA Ovation awards with London pal and fellow nominee Lara Pulver, then finishing off the night with a cheeky Burger King drive thru in which we both get salad.

London: no longer complicated

bonding with "the Noriega side."

singing with Lance Horne at in The American Songbook Series at Lincoln Center's Allen Roomwith the glitsiest of the glitsy.

standing up for, and respecting myself in my relationships.

making nice with the airports of the world. 

inheriting all of my mom's best clothes. (Score!)

bonding with fellow "Westenders" Paul Spicer and Julie Atherton.

meeting Rebecca Luker and kiiiiind of dying.

coping with the delights of a several intense snow storm dramas

Graduating. x

making new friends!

joining Actor's Equity..... it was.... underwhelming...

truly beginning my New York mindset,
     career,
          and life.

Self Portrait: 20.JAN.11

Gratitudes 101 - 115

101. Mom - for taking exquisite care of me over Christmas and the New Year. Literally couldn't love her more.
102. Uncle Bill, cousins Nick & Suzanne -- new family. Whaddaya know?
103. My brother Jordan, sister-in-law Maggie, and nieces Hannah and Madison.
104. New friends! The cast, blindingly talented creative team, crew and production team of Carousel 2.0 has been a fantastic new family that treat me like gold. Thank you. Gratitude. Gratitude in abundance.
105. The opportunity to re-visit my old friend Julie Jordan, and to create a whole new set of positive memories. I feel a profound sense of being exactly where I should be in my life.
106. ...and that being said, the endless pleasures of Dressing Room 3 are abundant! Thank you Victoria Strong and Jane Noseworthy.
107. time with Jer. What a friend.
108. Burton Gray - for the painting (inscribed "thanks for stopping by Al...")
109. People that came from outta nowhere: Toni Trucks (from Interlochen!), Wayne Wilson, Betsy Reisz & Claudia Vasquez (all from Minnesota!), Katie Garagiola (Michigan friend circa 1993), the Hey You Guys (mom's college roomies), Rich Schraier (whom I met through Jeremiah last year), the entire Beverly Hills crew (including my teachers from 2nd and 3rd grade!!) and blessed London friends Lara Pulver, Josh Dallas and Zoe Rainey for dropping everything to come to Carousel 2.0 and reminding me that I have friends everywhere, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. I was so moved to have them out there I cried in my car on the way home... I have friends. The world is big.
110. Jason Alexander - for mazto ball soup, pickles and conversation deeeeep into the night at Jerry's Deli
111. Meeting Audra. (Whoa.) I'm not often speechless or overwhelmed in any manner but this sort of floored me and I'm pretty certain I was a silent dorkface...
112. Again, the ENTIRE Reprise Family. The most gratifying professional job of my entire existence.
113. Zorba and all involved in the total magic of it happening. Magical indeed. "Life Is"... delightful. Opa.
114. The opportunity to work with lifelong idols.
115. New beginnings.

Los Angeles: Look Deeper

When I arrived on the Pacific shores a few days before Christmas I was many things:

incredibly ill
manic
heartbroken
confused
raging
panicked
isolated
suspicious
anxious
healing
totally lost

And somehow, in the course of a few weeks, I have come through all of those into a realm of utterly new feeling.

"At the ceasing of the running:
What terrified us so?
At the fall of the cities:
Why did we inhabit them?"

When we are confronted (sometimes affronted) by the state of Screeching Halt, we must do more than simply stop. There is nothing for us to do but be present with the pains, truths, realizations and we must work on our Selves. We must endeavor to deserve the growth. We must work for healing. And it is work, indeed.

There I was: broken, depleted, in an unfamiliar house surrounded by seeming strangers; and all of a sudden terribly alone with my pain for the very first time since my arrival in America.

But this place has greeted me open-armed.
And more profoundly, it had been here all along... waiting for me to be ready to rediscover it.

Home.

Los Angeles: Hello.
Hello there.
How I misjudged you.
How I assumed you were not for me, were no longer a part of me when in fact you are my place of origin. My 'Pourquoi Story.' You are where the narrative of this certain Alexandra began, the seat of a personal mythology.
You were the patient Penelope to my Odysseus.
The Eros to my Psyche.

I have often mused about the nature of Return:

A traveler. Perhaps that's it. Though my travels hardly feel worthy of comparison to those of the greats-- Rosalind's full circle to and from Arden, Bilbo Baggins' there and back again. I am no explorer like Vespucci, would never dare to term myself a gypsy nor pious enough for a pilgrim. 

But ahh LA.
How I had forgotten you.

And though I know I am no great traveler of Shakespearean or Historical proportion, I share with them and with us all, a cardinal desire: all I have ever wanted is what we all long for-- a place in the world. A home. 

I feel perhaps like Marco Polo in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities... In Calvino's book, the great explorer Marco Polo entertains an aging Kubla Khan by recounting tales of 55 cities he has visited in his travels. As Marco Polo continues to impart his experiences, he, willingly or un, revels connections between the cities that leave the reader left to wonder whether the accounts of his destinations actually represent different aspects of a single city; a unique and unrivaled place, in Polo's case, his beloved Venice.
 
You know, it is an odd thing, when we say we Return it naturally implies we've been Somewhere Else. I have more than returned from Abroad. From London. From New York or Siberia or my previous Self or even from the depths of heartbreak or the pits of near self-annihilation. For all my mythological rhetoric I am no Orpheus! And I would never dare to compare with the heartaches of Alcyone. By no means! An Amundsen, Franklin, or Thubron I am not.
No.
I have returned, simply, from Somewhere Else, (a town like any other..?)
Yes. It may still be Wednesday in the middle of our lives, but I am not who I was when I began.
And here in the land of Back Again, one finds they are presented with a second quest: the search for words to articulate the experience.

* * *

 
It would be impossible to properly articulate the profundity of the entire embracing experience in here LA. It was not merely a holiday, a period of emotional comingtogrips, of purging, of family introduction (complete with chasing cousins over a fence and odd but admittedly delicious Jesus birthday cake). Not simple about geographic re-emergence, touching base with childhood characters and straightforward Reunion.

It was not just a Carousel "do-over"-- a chance to revisit a character I've love deeply as if she is a real and breathing friend. A chance to right many of the wrongs done to her by the London experience, erase many of the haunting negative memories and perhaps replace them with more positive, healthy ones.

It was more than an opportunity to force myself to make myself vulnerable with an entirely new group of people-- people who knew nothing of, bore no resemblance to, either my British life, my Interlochen friends, my Michigan home.

They were new, potentially flippant strangers. One of the things that happens when one is hurt badly by people close to them is the sneaking suspicion that ill-treatment is all you are worth. How awful a person must I be, one thinks, to be treated this way by those I held dearest? I must deserve nothing better.

So. Initially filled with tremendous social anxiety (particularly in a role and in a piece that requires so much of one's emotional vulnerability), I was instantly introduced to an entire company of people who embraced me in a manner I cannot even begin to write... I can only lightly touch it and pray you understand-- it was an embrace filled with deep, real, poignant love. The love of very special friends and colleagues. And how I love them in return for their gift. The love of the pure theatrical alchemy that we all wish we can experience. The Theatre we dream of. The Theatre that made us love it all in the first place.

These people reminded me, taught me, showed me with their unconditional support, love, understanding, affection, that I was worth-y.

And it revived me.
In a city that had always been my home.
It was the ultimate Return.

* * *

A few days after our opening, I felt my heart open fully again. I felt it open, perhaps, more fully than it ever has in all my life.

I drove my rental car up to Melrose and parked across from the Troubador to take a meeting with a casting director. The day was iconic-- sunny, bright, sky a blinding blue; the kind of weather that fills one with the essence of vitality.

She asked questions.
She listened as I told her my story.
Then, after a brief pause she smiled at me across her desk.

"You know," she chortled lightly, "I am from Orange County. I grew up here and have seen so many people come and go, have watched as LA chewed good people up, spit them out. I've watched talentless people come to this town with big dreams, people willing to walk over anyone, to do any vile thing to get there..." she glanced out at the honey-colored light pouring in from her window.

"But you are from here. You were born down the road. And you went away, you lived your life, your had your dreams, you got some breaks but damn you worked hard to storm through those open doors when they presented themselves and legitimately made good. And here you are, back in your birthplace almost by accident and you've triumphed in such an unassuming way. You've come back-- not full of fluffy dreams but full of the real thing..." she smiled, "that's the kind of LA story I can get behind..." and she looked me straight in the eye, suddenly very serious.

"Welcome Home."

It was transfiguration.

Had I done that? Had I? I thought I had just kept pressing onward, forcing forward.

But this.... This conversation in a Melrose casting office was the moment I first began to see through the fog of sorrow and dislocation sat staunch upon my existence.
The murk lifted, and as it cleared I began in that very moment to create a new vision, (though I could not yet, in that precise instant, see it with total clarity).

It began with her words, followed by a warmth in my chest, and at last by a feeling of absolute certainty startlingly inspired by what is normally a rather gruesome professional exercise. Arriving to her typical Californian office block, her words were that of some kind of disguised prophet. And, thanks to V, suddenly this vision had size and shape.
It became tactile, tangible, populated.
And in this moment, I sensed a kind of threshold.

It has not been others who had prevented me from attaining my sense of belonging and worth,
it had been myself.
It had been my own unwillingness,
my own confusion about how to transform longing in to effective action.
Some people experience this with their professional goals
I experience it with Self.
I could sense a lifeline between these points now: tense, like a tightrope.
Something I could walk along.
In the last few years I had lost tension, and wandered without focus, struggling to survive.
And in this moment I knew:
     I will walk the wire.

* * *

Have I in fact discovered home was always there, patiently waiting for me to earn and deserve it? Observing Calvino observing Venice is a reminder of how often the controlled, measured world of knowledge and assumption fails us. So much of life resists the facts. As Khan discovers: imagining a"Venice" is imagining yourself. And though an unsettling exercise, it is necessary, perhaps. I believe my trip [Home], was precisely that.

So.

Goodbye LA.

Thank you for welcoming me home in such an incredible way.
I will never forget how coming back to a place I was unaware had always been my home, my place of origin, transformed a broken spirit and gave birth to not merely a new chapter,
but a new paradigm,
a new sense of life.

I am grateful to all who made it possible.
And I'll be back.
This is,
and apparently always has been,
Home.

"...what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in waiting for you in foreign, not-yet-possessed places."

-- Italo Calvino

Carousel 2.0

"The world belongs to you as much as to the next fella-- don't give up..."

The LA Times

Enjoy this little feature on Carousel 2.0 and myself in the

It has been a total joy returning to my birthplace.
More on the entire experience to follow (after our opening tonight!)

What a surprise and what a homecoming.

California: Comin' home...

California Christmas

Excellent.

I think the best way to start off when meeting new family members is to chase two of the teenage cousins over the fence because you have mistaken them for "hooligans."

Yes.

That sounds like a really quite fantastic way to start...