I've just come back from another trip to Florida - yep, this marked the second time in as few months that I went down there - but this trip was different.
First of all, I flew. Secondly, all I carried were my backpack and mandolin. Thirdly, there was absolutely no stress involved. As for that third statement there? Well, there are a couple reasons. And I have the tour to thank for all of them.
Touring made me a better traveler. I never over-pack, know exactly where everything is, know exactly how much I'm going to be spending and, most importantly, can easily improvise when things don't go as planned. The train is running an hour behind? There's a tomato-recall? Screaming child in the row behind me on the airplane? I don't need to stress out.
Compared to performing our show in a thrust-space for the first time after 6 hours of sleep after a 14 hour drive... that's nothing. Compared to swiping a Mack truck on the freeway at 70 miles per hour? ... It's like taking a nap. So, touring definitely imparted upon me the ability to relax, assess and respond rather than panic, panic and, subsequently, panic some more. Thank you, Theatreworks, for that. I had to share a hotel room with both my parents and my little sister, which made for some pretty cramped quarters, but I was never the reason we were late. I planned my showers around when they wouldn't be showering. I made the most of the half of the bed I'd chosen (and I made sure to choose first, another thing I learned while on the road). I brought my ear-plugs (essential for getting a good night's rest).
Part of the reason I've waited so long to write this last post is the fact that I needed to get a little perspective. Now that it's been nearly a month since Max&Ruby and I parted ways, I've had time to decompress and work through the negative aspects of this in a more helpful way. I've learned a lot about myself as a performer and colleague; I know that I can now deal with any curve-ball you throw my way and, more importantly, that I can help someone else hit that same curve-ball without assigning blame if everything goes wrong or crowing too loudly if everything goes right.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I thought I could roll with the punches before this tour, but now I know i can roll with the punches.
In order to come to that realization, however, I had to work through what was difficult and what, potentially, could have blinded me to what an overwhelmingly positive experience this whole thing actually was. By the end, we were all so weary - both of the show and one another - that we could barely muster heart-felt goodbyes and see-you-soons. We took a group photo (tellingly, only with the one camera) and then split off in different directions. In my case, I literally skipped town to clear my head a little bit from the fog of the preceding four and a half months.
In the ensuing weeks, I've had a lot of time to rage, rant, dissect and - slowly but surely - recover the good parts and start bringing those up in conversation. Sure, that story about the meth-pipe is terrible, but it's also hilarious. It's also a thing Ben and I will never forget and I know that, ultimately, it makes us better friends. Ditto that stupid incident with the towels that Michelle and I went through - yeah, ok, we had to blow off some steam and yell a little but if we hadn't, we might not be where we are as friends now. As for the rest of the team - we all rubbed each other the wrong way by the end, and I'm looking forward now to getting together, knocking back some beers and hearing you recount for the 10th time that story about the hookers in the Home Depot parking lot. Or that weird guy named Crash at the biker's bar karaoke night. I can't wait to see Ethan and laugh at the awkward rip in his pants that point-blank refused to be fixed. I'm anxious to get Leah in a room, watch her smell a beer and get drunk and wait for her to start shrieking out some Janis. Leigh's the whole reason we even have the "Cha Ching" phrase that will forever, indelibly be associated with this in my mind. I love that we run into each other at auditions and have a moment where we know we've both been to hell and back and get each other.
I guess that's the largest thing. We all get each other. Not just our senses of humour or fashion or predictable expressions, but all of it. I know Emileena's night-time routine before she goes to bed. I know what Ethan sounds like when he snores (and it's not that bad, kiddo, you should know). We all know what we all smell like, at every stage of the day be it pre-show, pre-shower or post-bar. We've come to know and loathe the smell of the van after our lunch-break after two shows, while Ben's ears dried out in the back and (inevitably) lent it a unique smell that can only possibly be described as musk.
And those are all great things.
I also know that I need even more time to recover before I take on a project this size again. If I'm going to be touring consistently (and part of me would be fine with that), I need to regenerate a little soul before I sell it to another production. I'm grateful for the shape I'm in as a result of touring - as I've said to many of my friends repeatedly, I can do real push-ups for the first time in my life - but I'm also grateful for my ceiling every day that I wake up underneath it. I am extraordinarily grateful for the little hovel I'm hanging my clothes in these days, for the fact that if someone visits NY, I'm actually here now and - most importantly - for the fact that I can call people like Arjun and Travis up and actually see them (schedules permitting).
So yes, touring was an extended anger-management course. It was boot-camp, it was close quarters, it was hell and it was riding in a dangerous vehicle and missing the Delaware Memorial Bridge and it was exit # 89 (which really, truly is the least convenient exit for coffee and pee-breaks, but should you ever want to visit the Decoy Museum...). It was a diet of coffee, cigarettes, the occasional joint and a constant barrage of fast-food, Panera and Ruby Tuesday's. But it was also mid-afternoon jaunts in the pool, exploring Myrtle Beach, cranking up Indigo girls while driving through some of the most beautiful (and/or terrifying) landscapes you can conjure up, Cracker Barrel experiences, and the ultimate spawner of inside jokes.
We have so many inside jokes, I couldn't begin to list them. I'm not even sure they're really funny, but when I remember the context, the lack of sleep, the endless list of injuries and other stupid happenings, I do remember how hard we laughed. I still laugh about the time we performed the show in a space that was too small for the entire set but we built the house anyway. I think we all accumulated new bruises, between kicking set-pieces that were too close and running into each other in an effort to avoid stepping on the kids. I also still laugh about Leah's weird face that she made every time I took a picture of her, before she made me retake it so she could smile. I think about "I have a crown like that at my dad's house!" and "Save yourselves!" and "Max, you've destroyed everything!" and thousands of kids chanting "Superbunny!" and the occasional kid peeing himself and I can't help but feel like we really accomplished something.
We brought a story to kids that don't always have access to theatre. We brought theatre, in two vans, from the northern most tip of the East coast to the southern most end of Florida.
We put over 7,500 miles on those vans.
I got to know six complete strangers better than I ever thought I could get to know someone outside of my family. I pushed myself (and my co-workers) to the limit in the interest of fostering the arts in an environment where they can't always grow. It's so huge, I have to repeat it: we brought a story to those kids! We gave them what we could, but they gave us the knowledge that what we do matters (even when it doesn't feel like it does) and that if we really, truly want to be performers, we have partially payed the debt that such a selfish career reflexively generates. Because we DO owe the community a story if we want to be story-tellers.
It wasn't always pretty, but it was always real. And honestly, I think that's the best I can ask for.
