Making Marian with Katie

Doing The Music Man in Chicago has been a great blessing to and for me, and a great break from the dark dark plays I've engaged with over the last few years. 

There have been SO many revelations—many that have occurred, artistic and personal—some simply because I am spending so much time outside of work by myself, in contemplation). Which, though I miss Alec and Tati terribly, is always fruitful for me. I am an introverted being after all. Solitude always seems to “force” something to the surface, outward, forward. 



It’s a fantastic room, and it’s profound to work with such a close friend

Katie Spelman as director/choreographer because I know she trusts me utterly. 

Katie is one of my best friends-- and, compared to some of my lifelong friendships-- she is a relatively new best friend; one I've made in the last 5 years. Something about that feels special. It's challenging to make friends in adulthood, particularly with fellow women (many of whom pair off and have children in this era of life-- so friend groups break apart and re-assemble around those choices through no "fault"). It's been an expansive relationship in every way.

Katie has visionary ideas but also encourages other great ideas and creates an environment where people can express them with ease. She is passionate but not rigid. She IS visionary — especially in the storytelling-through-dance part. 

But I’ll say the most beautiful thing I've experienced here is a kind of intimacy that I never expected — a feeling of closeness with Katie because we both sort of understand that in many ways I am playing a version of me, but more crucially a version of her. She is Marian at the top of the show, and I am Marian at the end. And together, we are weaving this new vision of Marian together. It's an act of total mutual creation and it feels sacred in its intensity and intimacy.
 

*

    We had an almost inexplicable moment of platonic intimacy the other day in rehearsal discussing the (beautiful, underestimated, gorgeous piece of theatre I utterly underestimated) second act scene when Harold Hill comes to call at Marian's house, and eventually invites Marian to "the footbridge."
 

There was a moment the other day when Katie was begging to cut the line “My dear little librarian…” 

And I took paused. Took a beat. First of all, it’s not my line (it is Harold's), but the ferocity of her passion for cutting it made me pause. I asked what bothered her about it. She said she thought it was "demeaning and diminutive and not Feminist." Despite her intellectualizing, I could see her emotion just below the surface. I love this person. I know her. This was a moment of Knowing.

I asked for a quick 5. 

It was time anyway, but it felt like a good moment to pause. Katie is a 37-year-old woman who if she had her choice, would have a significant life partner. She has some walls (who doesn't?), and it IS hard for her to find a worthy partner because she’s extra, extra extraordinary. But she’s also part of the problem. A problem I know and relate to very well. Because it is a problem I had myself… 

 

For years and years I was unavailable to real partnership and to the real reception of love because I was overwhelmed by childhood trauma, grief and self-loathing, then by illness -- and all of those contributed to the story that "no one could possibly want to love me." But the problem was not that I was unlovable— it was the fact that I believed I was. And with the belief so deeply rooted within my cells, in every action I took that I almost missed it standing right in front of me.

 

For in 2019, Alec Silver was RIGHT THERE. He was standing before me, totally in love with me, with MY EXACT F*CKING NAME

… and I almost missed him. Because of my stories. My insistence on my unloveability. I almost missed and blew the greatest gift of my life  because of my walls and fears. 

 

And this brings me to my next point— the line 
:

“I just can't. Please. Some other time, maybe tomorrow...” 



 

which oddly is the line before the “my dear little librarian” line. 

 

 

I cannot tell you how much this line shakes my soul.

Because again, Alec. And why I had to play this role after Alec.

Because love is right there.

Harold Hill is man making an actual bid to connect with Marian. He is, shockingly, truly worthy of her. They are both as lonely and broken and intelligent and isolated as one another, they both need each other. 

He is saying “please meet me— not just at the footbridge but in a place of intimate love” 

and she says “maybe tomorrow”

That was me.
Until Alec. 

"There was love all around, but I never heard it singing..."



So we broke, and I took her aside in private:
 

     “Katie… my whYfe. One of my very best friends. Part of Marian’s agony is that she is capable of so much love and passion, but her years and years of walls are preventing her from allowing herself to BE loved. And sometimes that allowance looks “soft” and “tender” and “feminine”…. none of that is negative. None of that is anti-feminist. Let’s try the line as a man who is making a bid to be soft with her. Who sees she needs softness. And then we can allow this woman who is terrified of being seen as 'girly' because she thinks it means she is weak... to be a creature of desire and of being desirED. And I think you’ll see it’s right. 
And to allow ourselves to be vulnerable is also the key to all of our liberation… when we’re ready”

Afterwards someone asked:    

         “What was that?” 



        And I replied: “That was love”