The Sunday Before

Sunday, February 12: T-minus 4 days.

It finally started to get to me this morning.

Allow me to explain (I’ll be doing a lot of that today and in days to come, I’m guessing … ).

For a good portion of my life, a day or so before I go on a trip, I tend to go into what I call “Travel Mode.” It’s sort of a state of not quite existential dread, where I’m anxious to go on the trip, but at the same time have trepidations about leaving home. Jimmy Durante, of all people, may have expressed this best in the 1942 film of The Man Who Came to Dinner, with his song “Did You Ever Have the Feeling That You Wanted to Go?”

 James Francis Durante as Banjo

This feeling is particularly strong right now, in that I’m about to leave home for the longest period I’ve ever been away in order to face what is, to me, both a huge privilege and a huge challenge. My goal in this blog is to chronicle the process, the production, and my impressions of the whole thing.

An(other) explanation is necessary for those of you whom I haven’t pestered with this story. In February of 2016, I played Samuel Beckett (not the guy on either Quantum Leap or China Beach, but the playwright) in Gino DiIorio’s play Sam and Dede, or My Dinner with Andre the Giant, which took the real-life relationship of Beckett (the man who pretty much reinvented 20^th century theatre) and Andre Roussimoff, the late Brobdingnagian professional wrestler. While the relationship was (to the best of my knowledge) limited to Beckett driving the teenaged Andre to school (he had the only truck in town that was big enough to carry him), the play extrapolates the friendship into their adult years and beyond. The play was very well received, so much so that, for a number of reasons, it was decided to revive it in New York in March of 2017 – the production of which I’m preparing for now.

My favorite photo of Beckett

Between rehearsal and performance, I’ll be in New York and away from home for nearly seven weeks – or 47 days, hence the title of this blog. Obviously, I’ve been away from home for extended periods before – mostly to Europe (five weeks in Russia and England in 1993; three weeks in England, France, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland in 2009), but never as long as this – and (obviously) never to act – especially off-Broadway.

But this is the morning when I went into Travel Mode. I woke up feeling a combination of excitement at the prospect of doing the play again in New York, depression at leaving home (and not seeing my wife for three weeks), anticipation and anxiousness (let’s get this thing started already!), and nervousness over how it will be received – and whether I can actually pull it off.

It’s a feeling not unlike the one I had when I was on Jeopardy. The night before taping, I got no sleep; I tossed and turned and “played” the game all night. I did well, since, in my mental state, I was giving answers for questions I knew (or that my brain told me were the correct questions), but I was especially anxious because, after all the decades of people telling me “You should be on Jeopardy!” (like it was my choice), I finally had to put up or shut up. It’s the same here for me. I’ve been acting for (thinks) 44 years now, and this is as close to the “real thing” as I’ve gotten, and, frankly, I don’t want to screw it up. (This is, of course, not to minimize the other professionals with whom I’ve worked over the decades; there’s just that aura to New York when it comes to theatre.)

The above feelings are combined with those about my apprehension over my apartment rental. I’ve been in the space – it’s an Airbnb with very high ratings which is owned by a very nice couple – but it’s different visiting a place and living in it – especially for this long a period of time – and even more especially when I’ll be sharing it with our stage manager, and, for varying amounts of time, her boyfriend and my wife. (I’ve had only one non-spousal roommate in my life, and that was short-term).

Now, for all of this, I should have no worries, really. I’ve been running my lines every night (thanks, Pidge!) and know them (or most of them, anyway …). We’ve done the production before and I know and like everyone involved. I’ve been to New York more times than I can remember, so living in and getting around the city won’t (or shouldn’t) be a problem.

In some ways, things should be easier this time than last. It’s a good play (a very good play, in fact) and actually seems (to me) more suited to New York than San Francisco. We’ve done it, we know it, and will actually have the luxury of rehearsing this time.

I’d ask you to allow me to explain that last sentence (another explanation!), but I’m approaching my self-imposed thousand-word limit, and don’t want to overstay my welcome – for now.