Well, that sucked.
I’ve been sitting on this post for almost a week. I knew I wanted to write it, but to be honest it has been really hard forcing myself to sit at my computer to reflect on the ending of our show. Last Friday, Katie Hahn, our director for Legally Blonde, emailed the cast the bad news. With a half dozen of our cast members out sick, the obstacles to performing our show on the final weekend were insurmountable. We cancelled our remaining performances. It was the right decision. It was a painful decision. Legally Blonde is over.
I’m embarrassed by the number of times I’ve broken out in tears over the past week. I’ve been puzzling out all of the reasons for this. Some of it, no doubt, stems from how this experiences parallels so closely the early days of the Covid pandemic, when sickness forced us to abort our on-campus classes mid-semester. It’s like reliving that trauma again on a smaller scale. In addition, this show was great. The cast ended the Sunday matinee on the first weekend, said goodbye to one another and anticipated a final weekend when we could wow another 1000+ audience members. None of that happened. I never got to say goodbye to my castmates. I didn’t get to communicate my appreciation to the young actors whose talent and dedication to the craft of live theatre motivate me to grow as a performer. I admire these people. When you spend two months preparing for a show, you grow closer to people. I feel like all of that is gone. I don’t even have a picture of the full cast.
Last Friday, Tara and I went to Grain Theory for dinner, a way of finding some comfort in a day filled with disappointment. After dinner we walked to the front of the Paramount, arriving about 30 minutes before the opening curtain that would never happen. There were a few excited audience members on there way to the theatre, people who hadn’t yet heard the news. Some of them were in pink. The sadness was palpable. I lingered, Tara tells me. She is right. I didn’t want to leave. But there was no reason to stay.
This has been a hard week. I find happiness in knowing how enjoyable this show was for the three audiences we performed for during our opening weekend. I cling to the hope that there will be other shows in the future to audition for, other opportunities to be on stage with performers who amaze and inspire me. Who knows what the future holds? There are some upcoming shows I’m thinking of auditioning for, though no local musical theatre shows announced just yet. I’m excited about the acting class I’ll be taking this Fall. I’m also continuing voice lessons, and my daily practice routine is one of the highlights of my day. These are providing me ways of remaining connected to the joy of theatre, even in a moment when there are no actual performances to look forward to.
I wish there was some happy spin I could put on the end of Legally Blonde, but I don’t have any way to spin this. This was not how it’s supposed to end. I am looking forward to some sort of new beginning.
Beautifully written