Turning Point

So if any of you are, in fact, even bothering to still follow my sad, pathetic attempt at blogging, I will share with you a secret: I'm not very good at it. Shocking I know. Microblogging (e.g. Twitter/Facebook) I'm a whiz at. Blogging, not so much. To be fair, I've been ridiculously busy, so I'll excuse myself for this. Hopefully, moving forward I'll do better.

So, since my last posting, in a dramatic reversal of fortune, I once again bit off a lot to chew on with regard to theater. I was choreographing and performing in Willy Russell's "Blood Brothers" - a haunting musical play about twins separated at birth and the effects of class/socioeconomic status on an individual's life path. It was a very challenging role for me since it called for me to not only age from 7 up through late 20s over the course of the show, but also to play well outside of type and become a very gritty, broken down, desperate, eventually violent person. Unsurprisingly, these are roles I do not often play.

I've also been choreographing a production of "NINE" - a musical based off of Italian film director Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical film "8 1/2." It's been a challenging project mostly because of the lack of rehearsal time given to me to stage the numbers I was responsible for - I got more rehearsal time for "Blood Brothers," which had virtually no *real* dancing in it than for this project! It basically came down to the fact that there was a lot to do on all fronts - directing, music, choreography - and not really enough time to delve into it as much as we'd like. It is starting to come together, though there's still a ways to go.

Today however, I'm reflecting mostly on an album that has gotten me thinking. One of my "Blood Brothers" castmates burned me a copy of the musical "bare," which is one of his favorite shows and that he'll be starring in soon. I started listening and haven't really stopped since. The music seems like an odd hybrid of "RENT," "Spring Awakening," and "Zanna Don't!" But, the themes are so close to home and they've dredged up a lot of old memories and the realization of how different my life is now.

Basically, the story centers around two closeted homosexual students in a Catholic boarding school trying to make sense of their feelings. One of them is the star student, athlete, all-around-great guy and the other is his roommate - a kind of geeky, theater kid. The latter decides over the course of the show that he wants to move forward and come out, the former is still fixated on the life he was "supposed" to have and doesn't want to stop being the golden boy by coming out.

Just a lot of really poignant and familiar things going on in the show for me... obviously easy to identify with elements of both of these characters, but particularly with the Jason character - the golden boy - who was so sure his life would go a certain direction and be a certain way.

I guess it just hammered home how different my own life is from where I thought I was going to be from back then, and has me thinking about where to take it from here. I guess sometimes something comes into your life that really hits you at the right time and for the right reasons and causes you to be truly grateful for the directions your life has taken and inspiring you to figure out what comes next. I've been feeling like something like that was overdue for awhile, and I think this unlikely source - a happenstance sharing of a relatively obscure musical from a friend - is kind of striking that chord right now. Can't wait to see where it leads from here...