2002-04-17 - 9:50 a.m.

Would you like some sour grapes to go with your whine?

So last night I had an understudy rehearsal for Cow Place. A couple of the understudies are performing this weekend. They're not ready. Me? I'm pretty close to ready, though still no idea when I'd ever actually go up and perform.

I'm understudying two guys, and I was prepared to stand in for both of them last night, to get a chance to do the scenes. Yeah, well, one of the guys did every one of his scenes last night. Every. One. I actually sat in the audience for almost an hour, doing nothing, watching him, who has been doing these for weeks upon weeks do them again, and deny me my chance to rehearse them, for like the first time ever. Every scene I would stand up and offer to do it, and every scene he would say no. Every. Scene.

I can't tell you how much that pissed me off. I skipped a stage combat class to be there, and I wanted to get as much out of it as possible.

Then. Then! Understudy Dude, who is performing this weekend. Who has seen the show once. Once! (I probably don't need to tell you that I was at *every* *stinking* rehearsal the last week and have been to the show at least once *every* *stinking* weekend). He's going through this rehearsal, often with script in hand, and everyone's falling all over themselves about how good he's doing. Yeah, he's an incredibly talented guy, and characters just spring out of him like nobody's business. Yeah, he was doing a pretty good job of memorizing considering that he just got the scripts. Yeah, he'll probably do a pretty good job.

But here's my point. He's doing a great job for being unprepared. But the point is that he's unprepared. Don't praise someone for scrambling hard at the last minute. What about the people who have been there the whole time? You know, the people who put in the time, paid their dues, worked their asses off to be prepared weeks if not months in advance? You know, people who tried to be professional? You know, me?

It just pissed me off that he was suddenly the golden boy. I would be ashamed to be that unprepared less than a week before performing.

I guess I was just feeling kind of underappreciated. I dunno. I was in a shitty mood anyway. I was pissed off last night, and I was hoping that by waiting till this morning to write this it would sound less like sour grapes. I'm in a better mood, but it does still piss me off.

Anyway, I stalked out of there as soon as I could. Went home and watched tv for a while. Went to bed early.

Speaking of which. I was actually in bed by 11:00 last night, and fell asleep pretty quickly. I woke up a couple of times, but I had a very solid night's sleep. I feel remarkably awake and lively today. And I'm guessing that the orgy of pollen has slowed down some today, because I feel a hell of a lot better than I did yesterday.

Of course today is going to be a long, long day. I've got voice lessons and then acting workshop. I've got my lines down for my scene, but I have very little idea about the character. I feel like Mr. Exposition in the scene and I'm not sure what the character actually wants. What his objective is. We'll just have to see what happens. I'm guessing we won't make it very far into the script anyway.

Okay, I need to do some work.