My take on Sondheim's Cinderella in "Into the Woods"

Blogger is being annoying and won't let me put this in the previous post. So you'll have to read the previous post on character development to fully appreciate this.

Let’s take, for example, my favorite musical in the whole world, "Into the Woods" by Stephen Sondheim. I have always vocally wanted to sing Cinderella but before I was like “she’s a princess” and I am just not. But now that I've done this discovery I've realized she is not really that at all. Sondheim’s Cinderella is complete solitary and has no family who loves her or knows her and she just wishes and wishes to be someone different. Plus she is kind of abrasive and quirky…hello, she talks to birds. So she meets the prince and suddenly she's this beautiful princess and she's not really sure that that is what she wanted. She is a big pile of worry and confusion, but she’s sharp and takes a risk and lets it happen. She becomes the princess even if she isn’t sure she is on the inside. And she has the prince.  But life, as it always is, is not perfect. 

In the Act II, her prince cheats on her and her friends start getting killed via Giantess and she becomes the nurturer for many of the surviving characters. And I just GOT it. I realized that I can, in fact, EMBODY her. This system really does work. And I love this musical so much, not because I can sing the hell out of this character, but because I understand HER. I can BE her. It's very fulfilling as an actor to make this kind of discovery. And I'm so excited to find and discover more characters just like this. Let's just hope I get to play them someday. :)

Sondheim is a genius and Patrick is a bit of genius too. Not to be hyperbolic, but he has yet opened another door for me. And I’m so thrilled to walk through it and discover what’s inside. 

The Psychoanalysis of Character Development

I had to divide the last post which included this into two posts. I diverged on a tangent and I've been writing so much. There's not really much else I can do except sit, watch TV, write and think. I can't sit down and read a book (the tumor and pain make my brain disoriented and unable to focus), I can't exercise obviously, singing is hard because my energy is very low and the meds have been causing some vocal blockage, and my driving is limited because I get drowsy and disoriented and have tunnel vision. So writing has been my big outlet when so many of my other ones have been shut down. Which is good in a way. When you are ill, you have lots of time to collect your thoughts, so you may as well record them.

I'm not sure if I've ever talked about this before, but when Patrick and I had an artistic career meeting, he discussed about how to connect to characters you play and how you pick the ones that are perfect for you. He says that you have to go back to the root of your childhood and identify a motif that affected how you behaved for the rest of your life and why you do what you do. And all your strengths and weaknesses come from that. It's an interesting theory. The reason we started this conversation is because he says he thinks my "awkwardness" is a wall I put up. It's a defense mechanism. For what? I'm not sure exactly...I'm still on that road to self-discovery. But if I had to pick a core psychoanalytical moment it would be being an only child and being surrounded by large extended families, 4 kids on side, 3 kids on the other, and that feeling of loneliness and solidarity, seeing the bonding of siblings around me that I didn't have. It's rather ironic that I'm marrying a man who is the oldest of 4 because of this. There have been moments, as an adult, with Braden, where I will cry when I get home from family functions, because of the bond and vibe and that unique relationship of the siblings. It's like a bunch of us are in the house together at Christmas and then the Adams kids all leave together and the Apple kids all leave together, and then I'm just alone. And sometimes this involuntary crying just flows out of me. I get embarrassed, and he reassures me that I will always have him. This is why I bond so closely with my friends and why it's very very painful to me when friendships fall apart, either naturally or delibaretely

So I guess to deal with my solidarity, I became incredibly shy as a child. I mean, I wouldn't look anyone in the eye. I was afraid to look or talk to their friends, salespeople, anyone. It was kind of freakish. I think my parents thought I might have had Aspurger's syndrome. My whole life I've struggled with eye contact. Kids made fun of me sometimes. By high school I had an abnormally high case of social anxiety. But I made friends and because I grew up in the same school for 13 years, I kind of became that quirky, awkward, funny girl that everyone liked in spite of her oddness. But by college, I had all these walls that had been accepted before; social anxiety eye contact, awkwardness, funny abrasiveness, a need for lots of alone time, quirkiness and SOLIDARITY and they were my protectors and I had a very hard time making friends. Plus, I was painfully insecure at Elon about my talent and got shit on by many a self-absorbed, ladder-climbing actor. And occasionally a professor. And I just kind of let these walls run my life for years.

And it wasn't until I found myself in the heat of this illness that I was able to start letting all those things melt away. My experience at Elon did not cause a burning pain for me anymore. I could greet new and higher status people with confidence. A CATHARSIS, if you will. Patrick called it, in simplified terms "the ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan." Not just what we think of as physical beauty but the evolution of self.

Another facet of this is that I am a complete nurturer and mother figure to those who suffered like I did for their social inadequacies. Like there was this kid in Evita who was kind of annoying but sweet. He was constantly singing random showtunes over and over and would say really inappropriate jokes, blow up at authority figures and didn't seem to have an "on deck" for ideas to come out of his mouth. My friend said "Does he ever power down?" Then it was a down low thing that we found out he really DID have Aspurger's and suddenly I had to be his big sister. I had to take care of him. I actually became quite fond of him, in spite of his quirks. Cruelty towards the socially anxious kills me on the inside. I HAVE to protect people from it.

This entire conversation really spoke to me and I saw myself and my past in a mirror that I had never seen before. I feel a new breath inside me because of it. He really should write a book on it. (And let's not even get started that he shared that his motif is SEDUCTION. Oh Lord, could it be any more clearer?) And so now I am discovering myself and with that, I am discovering how to connect to characters and which ones I should strive to play. I am suddenly excited about reading plays and librettos again. It will give me lots to do when I am recovering from my surgery.

The Penultimate

Tomorrow (well today, technically) I get the news about my biopsy about my tumor. What exactly those "suspicious" cells are. I am not really terrified or scared. I'm sure I will be when I get there tomorrow with my entourage of Mom, Daddy and Braden. I have been jittery all day.

After a lot of bad days (for example, yesterday was pretty much non-stop pain and crying, despite the fact that Mom and I were shopping all day for relief), today I was actually quite happy and perky and energetic. Which is strange because I had a bought of night terrors last night, which my mom witnessed for the first time. Braden has seen them a few times over the last 6 months. They are not really night terrors, but more "disoriented pain and anger and fear." It's not mental, it's physical. It's like when you wake up in the morning from a dream and you are groggy and it takes a while to realize where you really are. For me, I'm sleeping peacefully and all of a sudden I awake to pain on an 11 on the 10 scale and I scream or moan or cry or start yelling. Last night, because we had to to wait so so so long to hear back from the biopsy, I was a ticking time bomb. And I was so angry that I had only slept 3 hours. I just wanted more sleep and no pain. I was disoriented, sleep-deprived and lashed out at my mom in a psychotic manner. She was scared, and rightly so. Braden had to come over at 4am and medicate me. It's embarrassing, I haven't really told anyone about them and they've only happened half a dozen times over the past 6 months and usually no one is in the room with me, I'm on the couch or something. But I guess I just cracked.

But now the day of results is upon us. And I guess that put me in a happy mood. I went to visit my grandmother, Honey who I hadn't seen in over a month and since we heard of my diagnosis. My mom and grandma have a very co-dependent relationship, and my mom takes care of her frequently, several times a week, despite the fact that Honey has a caretaker, Fatmata (who I am convinced is an angel. Some people just have a beam of light around them, and she has it.) But when Honey found out I was sick, she told my mom to solely look after me. We were all really surprised...but in a way it makes sense. She understands what it's like to take care of an ailing child.

My mom has spinea bifida and you wouldn't know today, but until she was 18, she was constantly ill and in and out of the hospital. When she was born, they didn't know if she would be able to walk, if she would be paralyzed, if she would be slow and so many other things. She's had dozens of surgeries in her lifetime. At age 17, she had a major surgery that fixed her spine, colon and urethra and made her just about as normal as everyone else. I did not know this till I was 20. She never wanted to burden me with her disability. I was blown away when she told me...I remember just not being able to comprehend that my mom spend her childhood disabled. She claims to walk with a limp (I've never noticed it) and she uses some special instruments for her lower extremities. But she had me naturally and basically she is healthier than me or my dad. She gets it. Both Mom and Honey are two of the strongest women I know in a health crisis. The Crouse-Adams women have strong blood.

So I decided to visit her today and talk about what was going on with me and how I felt. Sometimes I get weary around the elderly. Part of it is I move really fast and am a bit self-absorbed and talk a lot and it's hard for me to slow down and just listen. But because of this ailment, I've HAD to slow down. And it was nice, just to sit there and talk to her, just me and her and listen and watch her take everything in. She is an 86 year old woman and she is frail but she is 100% lucid when she is on her medication. (She does have some long time chemical mental problems...like so many of us....) She's sharp and she's not going to last forever. I think I want to spend more time with her, getting to know her better. I'm always around her with my mom and they have a very love-hate-up-down dynamic and I want to spend time just her and me, hearing about her life and wisdom before she goes. I guess I've always been a little intimidated of her. She was, in her prime, a Type-A version of my mom. A southern Martha Stewart, with some loopy mental problems. And she's always been loving and generous, but she's not warm and fuzzy like my other grandma Barbara was.

So I felt good visiting her. Then I went to visit my aunt Jane and uncle Rick, Happi's parents, who live down the street, to fill them in too. And again, I don't get to spend a lot of time with them either with anyone else around, since they have 4 kids and my mom and dad or someone is usually around. I really love them, we're very close and they have a wonderful spirituality, conversation skills and sense of humor. I really enjoyed talking to them...I didn't want to leave when they had to go to work. I think in my youth they thought I was this self-absorbed, super anxious, artsy kook...which I kind of was. But now I feel like they really respect me and my life choices. And of course, I'm glad to have them by my side during this ailment.

And the thoughts kept rollin' in and out...

Before I had the biopsy, Dr. Bagley scheduled an MRI scan of my entire head and neck. Now the first MRI back in December was not all that bad. I got to listen to opera on headphones and while it was mildly uncomfortable to lay still for 30 minutes, all that padding felt like I was laying on tempurpedic bed. In a way, it was a little relaxing.

The second MRI at Duke, was a panic attack nightmare. While I still got to lay on the pillowed bed, there was no relaxing music. My head was strapped down to the bed. My chest was strapped down. I only move my arms a bit. I asked for an eyemask but they didn't have one. They did however give me a washcloth to put over my eyes because I knew if I saw the inside of that machine 6 inches from my face, I was going to freak out. Now most procedures if I've had them before, piece of cake. IVs, blood drawn, pap smear...I can handle it. And I am not usually a claustrophobic person, but this was awful...I felt like I was being sent into space. On top of that they inserted some kind of iron dye into my IV to make the films more readable which made me dizzy and hallucinate. So here I am in this loud, blaring machine with no calming music, completely tied down to this bed for AN HOUR AND A HALF and I'm hallucinating that I'm going to miss the opening night of Evita and Lynda Clark is going to eat me for breakfast (and then some). I am freaking out and all I can think about is "sing Musetta in your head! Sing Quando M'en Vo in your head!!!" Because that's what I do when I get nervous during intense medical procedures, I sing opera in my head. (It worked during the biopsy too.)

A few days later, we go to Bagley's office to view the MRI. And there I am, in radio form. Now, the inside of a person's head is supposed to be symmetrical. But on the lower left side of my head and neck have this huge mass on them. Not symmetrical at all. And it becomes clear that I very much have a tumor. And this is cliche, but it was one of those moments where life slows down to half time, like a heartbeat. I'm looking at this film and I have tunnel vision and hearing. It was one of, if not the most, slow burn shocks, I've ever ever had in my life. My mother is breathing hard and whimpering, my dad is anxious and asking question after question. And I just want to hear the doctor's plan. Here is the tumor. It is real. How are you going to fix it, doc? So he says I have to have the biopsy to determine the benign or malignancy of it. Good. That's all I need to worry about for the next couple of days. If there's one thing that's gonna keep me sane, it's doing exactly what the doctor says and taking this process one day at time.

Mom left the room with the doctor to ask more questions. I went to look out the window and I got choked up and started to tear up. Dad did the same thing and embraced.
All I could do is look at him and say "I'm scared."
He said, "I know."

Then I just kept talking out my feelings through the tears," I am going to get better. We are going to get through this together. God is watching over us. And I have a strong, stable man who loves me and is going to stay by side no matter what and we are going to get married. Whatever happens, they are going to fix me." Of course, this monologue came out rather choked up and blubbery. It was what I felt in the moment. And Dad reaffirmed it all.

I'm still scared. The image of the tumor mass of the MRI is permanently cemented into my brain, and at times, it weighs me down. I have good pain days and bad pain days. It's day 5 and we still haven't heard back from the biopsy. I am ready to get this toxic alien out of my body. I am ready to move on. I am ready to be free and back in my old body again.

Have I said too much? Is there nothing more I can say to you?

It's amazing what you can get done when you're practically bedridden on pain management medication. You can finalize your wedding guest list and your registry. You can make and cancel the dozens of doctor's appointments. You can reorganize your iTunes. You can respond to all the emails you've been avoiding You can read plays and order some online on Amazon.com (whoops) You can watch the entire 2nd season of Parks and Rec and laugh your butt off. And sometime in there you try to sleep when your not smothered by headaches and when your neck doesn't feel like it's being stabbed constantly.

I had my biopsy on Monday. I had to get blood work done first and because they told me not to eat or drink any water, I was completely delirious. Now, I'm a prideful gal but a wheelchair was necessary. I had a little snack after the blood work and Aunt Wendy came down from Greensboro to support us. She used to be a nurse in neonatal so I'm glad she was there. Then I went into the biopsy prep with Braden and I guess I missed the memo about not eating for the biopsy because I was supposed to be sedated, but because I had eaten they couldn't do it. That scared me a little to have another local. There was lots of praying and tears and tender kisses between Braden and I. He is my rock. So the biopsy doctor was very kind and gentle...he did offer me lots of pain meds through the IV. It was uncomfortable being in the CT scan machine and there was lots of sore pressure, but not as painful as the spine injection. Good thing I had taken some valium because I was just thinking of me playing Musetta and babbling to the nurse about the wedding.

The cells they found were "suspicious" which could mean a number of things. We just don't know. Now we're just waiting for the pathologist to analyze them...and all this waiting is the hard part. There were some tears, but we're all trying to stay strong day by day. The spot on my neck where they clipped the cells is very VERY sore and hard to sleep on.

I've been receiving an outpouring of love and support from blood family, friends, and all of my theatre families. :) Despite all this, I pulled through Evita strongly and we pulled off a great show. I'm so proud of being a part of it. As Patrick said, "you were in agony the whole process, and yet you were passionate and professional every single night." So I guess that says something about commitment to my craft. Even La Diva Carolina Lynda Clark has adopted me as one of "her girls". She is gonna coach me on some monologues when I am on the mend. I made a lot of new friends and professional contacts and mentors during this show. It was all worth it.

Becca "Evita" and I hoofing it during the Buenos Aires number. She was the kindest most gracious antii-diva but boy did she have some PIPES!

Even though this horrible medical incident is happening to me, in a way, I feel like it's put my life in a focus. It's given me a sense of drive, a sense of planning, and sense of not getting every little desired detail of life right is okay. If there's anything I have learned, you cannot plan for life, but boy it does make you re-evaluate what's important to you and how you have to be strong, even in the bleakest moments.

Advice from the wonderful Lynda Clark

"You must be as HUMBLE as possible off stage and ARROGANT as possible on stage."

A New Argentina!

This has not been much of a performance blog since I have been ailing, but there is light at the end of the tunnel on that front. The Duke doctors have been very aggressive in diagnosing me. They have found a growth on my lymph node which is pressing on my C2 nerve, which makes sense why the pain is so acute. My doctor believes it's a benign tumor and I am having another MRI tomorrow to get a closer look. It's all been a little scary, but hopefully soon they will cut me or laser me or do something proactive and I'll be on the road to recovery.

Our final dress rehearsal for EVITA was tonight, and boy has it been an exhilarating but exhausting process. You try putting up a big budget musical in 3 weeks! Somehow Patrick and Cinny and the Moore Onstage crew have achieved it. I cannot wait to open and for my friends and family to see the show. It takes place in a giant theater, a 1500 seat house with a big orchestra, New York and Broadway actors in the show, vintage costumes and crazy costume changes. I have a 25 second costume change that me and my fabulously dresser Ryan manage to pull it off seamlessly. (pun intended).  To perform on that big stage is breathtaking...it's like having a little piece of the Broadway dream.

I am in the featured ensemble, I play Eva's sister, get a few solos here and there. I have had many epiphany moments during this show that I realized how much of a professional I actually I am. Despite how silly and quirky I am, I always come to rehearsal focused and committed to work and explore. The pay may be diddly but it's my job and I treat it with respect. I began to notice that cast members were looking to me for musicality and blocking cues, even coming up to me with questions and helping them run numbers. And I was getting so many compliments on my soprano voice even from the leads. Che is played by a Broadway actor named Jose who is one of the coolest and most down-to-earth actors I've ever met (we bonded over our respective spinal injuries) and though many an Evita has had a reputation for being a diva, Rebecca is a complete sweetheart and humble and gracious and fun offstage. It's a wonderful production and I wish we could run longer. I have never ever considered myself a leader but it's funny how I just fell into that position.