May 20th, 2016

​Coming Home to P3/East

This past month has been like a revving engine in my patient move to Chicago. I've started a month-long intensive with the humbling company, Theatre Y. I've found a job that allows me to feel secure, purposeful, and still maintain flexibility and support in my artistic endeavors. I'm feeling overwhelmed, thrust into the fire, but that I'm creating a balance worth sweating for. 

In this month of May, which has seemed to offer little respite, I was able to spend three days coming home to P3/East, the company of my mentors Robyn Hunt and Steve Pearson. Their workshop in Chicago happened to coincide with the arrival of our director for Theatre Y's Macbeth, so I was only able to pry myself away for three short evenings. But during those days off, I found the bike rides to Unity Lutheran nestled in the shade of the neighborhood trees (always surprising how some parts of Chicago feel like a quiet suburb,) to be like riding my bike home in Menlo Park. The tension of meeting a new director, the anxiety associated with trying to please him, or impress my fellow actors, seemed to vanish in those few hours. 

In training, I find the comfort of new breath, of inspiration. I am reminded to see, to receive, to expand. In this room, many of us are strangers, but what we know, what we experience collectively is profound in the moment. And I forget this, in moments of fear and newness and not knowing. I somehow leave the breath behind, or push, or become acutely aware, self conscious. The training reminds me, (and also thanks to the wondrous Cathy Madden,) that it's all an invitation, and that there's choice in every action we take. Though three days isn't enough, it never seems like quite enough, I'm so grateful there's a place to come home to.

LBR