I guess it's a good thing that he's getting in there. It's not the kind of play you can get away with skimming along on the surface. As he says in the script, "you've got to get to sinew." Trouble is, he's kind of a morose, thin-skinned little bastard. I've found myself surprisingly cranky these days. I thought it was the troubles with my neck, money troubles, and my anxiety about how difficult it has been to learn the lines to this play - the first and last of which lead me to worried thoughts about losing my capacity as an actor. If there was one place I always felt like I was in command of myself and what I did, it was in the rehearsal room. Not so right now. I'm struggling, irritable and fighting a vague sense of inadequacy.
Of course it didn't occur to me until I was lying in bed at 5:30 this morning, unable to sleep and gloomily examining the state of my life, that I realized it was the damn character who was working this insidious mojo on me. Not only is he cantankerous, edgy, laconic, he is also deeply vexed by profound existential questions about his own place in life. There I was, lying in my bed. I sleep on my side, facing the edge of my bed, and I often wake up in the early hours because I've somehow pushed off the covers, and I am lying there exposed and freezing. This morning, and I'm lying there and noticing how close I am to edge, like I'm on the edge of a cliff ready to plummet into some sort of abyss. Cheery. Then, it hits me. That's Danny thinking. I feel a little better, but, of course, I can't sleep because I suddenly start writing this post in my head and I know I won't be able to get back to sleep until I get it out. Obsessiveness, another Danny trait. So here I am, at 6 in morning, when I should be sleeping because I have another tough rehearsal day ahead of me doing another thing that the annoying bastard I'm playing does incessantly. Soliloquizing.
High diddly dee...
It's going to be a great show, though.
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