Sometimes we just push ourselves too damn hard.
This week my body let me know I’d crossed a line into Too Much.
Upper respiratory something-or-other and a 36 hour headache with nausea will definitely get a person to slow down.
However, the show must go on, as they say.
It’s not so much the show itself though…it’s all the people counting on you to show up. The sixteen other actors, the director and stage management team, and the 60+ people who chose to come out on a wet, cold night to see a Shakespearean tragedy instead of the tragedy that played out on the football field. That group included some dear friends and TWO groups of middle school and high school students who are exploring theatre and Shakespeare. I had to show up.
Right before my last scene I was 95% sure I was going to vomit and ran outside and dropped to my knees in the grass. I recovered without the upheaval, thank God. The irony of the theatre and that moment is that when you’re playing a person having a mental breakdown, and your fellow actors see you fall to the ground outside, they assume you’re fine and just prepping for the moment. Nope. So sick, y’all.
The illness definitely showed in that final scene, but it didn’t hurt it…she’s done lost her mind at that point. She IS ill.
I have now slept a lot. Fever broke at some point in the night–the moment when I realized I was crazy-hot under my mountain of blankets instead of still freezing.
Chicken soup for breakfast allowed me to take some medicine both for the headache and the upper respiratory whatsit. More soup and medicine now.
Because, once again, tonight a lot of people are counting on me to show up and do my best work. We offer our work to each other and to the audience.
Not showing up is not an option.
So we do everything we can to keep all the things we’re juggling up in the air, to not drop the ball, and to take care of ourselves in the process.
Don’t let the devil get you down.
Healing will come.
Reflections & Connections 