The Run

June 8th, 2010Blog0 comments

“The actress in your show is really beautiful — she could be in Miss Saigon. Does she sing?”

“I don’t know mom,” I said, “I think she’s just only interested in doing theatrical acting.”

“Oh. Well, she should get into singing. She could be in Miss Saigon.”

I’ve been fielding a lot of weird calls since I got back. It’s neat to have a show going on in a distant city. You look at your watch at around 4 pm and you think, “Huh — it’s half hour right now. Show’s going to start soon. I hope everyone’s having a great day over there – ” Meanwhile you’re punching out pages or you’re about to eat or you’re playing Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox or doing some other mundane thing. Meanwhile your show is going on — your friends are in it, an audience is listening to your work, and you’re totally physically removed from it but you’re emotionally connected to it. It’s sounds weird, but you feel displaced, like you’re in two places at once: Head over here, heart over there. The two parts of you are now separate.

I’ve been getting a lot of nice emails from strangers. One literally just said, “Thank you.” Someone else wanted to know where the interstitial music came from (they’re all tracks from Cambodian American rapper Prach Ly). The reviews have been great, my agents are ecstatic, and we’ve accomplished everything we set out to accomplish. The play has gone through a true second production — that is, it’s evolved, tightened up, gained focus. It’s really come of age.

So it is pretty weird to be so far away from it now. I feel like I should be there every night, but instead I’m here wondering how things are going. The show’s like some kind of deep-space probe, floating out there somewhere and transmitting signals back home — off exploring the universe on its own.

It’s strange to be away from it, but it’s a pretty good feeling knowing that it’s out there.