I will admit I was worried…because the whole day it didn’t feel like I had a show that night. And rehearsals had gone so fast and so smoothly that it was hard for me to realise that it was performance time.
But when half-hour call hit at 4:30 and I was sitting, cross legged in front of a full length mirror, half-in-costume-half-out with a dressing robe on and an evening gown laid out on the bed behind me…and make up scattered everywhere around me…transforming myself into Katarnia Goodinov…a spoiled yet neglected little valley girl with a chip on her shoulder the size of north dakota…I felt the butterflies launch in my stomach.
And I looked myself in the eyes as I swept the last of the eyeliner across my lids and …
Oh right…there you are. Where’ve you been hiding?
And lo, all was right with the world. And though I wasn’t wearing my character shoes, I felt them slip onto my feet as surely as though they were strapped into place.
Standing outside the speciality dining room where the murder mystery dinner was to take place, I looked at one of my fellow cast members
You’d think, after all this time I would be over the stage fright
Nah sweetie, you never get over it, the day you get over it you lose something, you just learn to look it in the eye and shake its hand…now get in there…
And I strode through the double-glass doors, picked up the microphone, and Katrina took over for the rest of the night. The show is three quarters improv, and no matter how much you rehearse improv you can never quite know what you’re going to say before hand…sometimes things just come out of your mouth and you watch your scene partner have that flicker of “niiiiiiice” that no one else sees.
You learn to totally live for those moments.
This is the fourth season in a row I’ve been cast as the killer. And the second time in this role. I’ve often thought that it’s obvious my character is the killer, she has the only truly solid motive, and yet I still managed to fool most of the tables. There were several shocked looks when security came into pull me out, struggling and screaming defiance, from the dining room. Once the show was over and we all came back to mix and mingle…I was once again surprised by the feedback
Why aren’t you on Broadway? Why don’t you do this for a living? Why didn’t we know??
Because I’m not, because I can’t right now, because there are circumstances that sadly are against me…you don’t know because I don’t talk about it, because sometimes talking about it hurts too damn much. But give me a chance to perform? And you’ll see me…for who I am…for what I am…
Give me the music and the mirror, or the script and the microphone…
And you are giving yourself the chance to see me..
And I get the chance to remind myself that yes – wherever I am, whatever I do…this…this is who I am. And who I ever shall be.
My days are tied to curtains, they rise and they fall…and like it or not, I am still reborn every night, at half-hour call.