jennings rampage

I’m soooooo whiny!

The Syndicate had a show tonight; it was my first show back after my nagging illness and scheduling conflicts kept me away from my team for a month.

We debuted our new opening, and I dig it big time. It’s a sort of a monologue pattern game, where we deliver monologues in a semicircle, cutting each other off to take focus, and develop patterns and themes through storytelling. It’ll be really really neat once we get a better handle on it and be more effective with it as a theme-generating tool, but I had great fun performing it tonight.

I did not dig my scenework. I fell into a trap of playing a mostly silent character who gave few gifts to my scene partner, the night after Delaney demanded that I be more conversational onstage. It was a big character if stoic and unresponsive, and Napier, bless him, played off it well, but as the old saying goes, just because I was getting laughs doesn’t mean I was doing the work correctly. Basically, from the me-centric standpoint, all I was really pleased with was my contribution to the opening and the second group game; other than that I contributed very little from an ensemble standpoint, and had the indignity of getting the blackout on a very, shall we say, inexpensive callback.

This isn’t a commentary on the piece as a whole — the ensemble was really there, we were as relaxed as we’ve ever been, and we had a solid show. Call it a 7 on my special “I’ll Never Give Myself Higher Than An 8 Out Of 10 Scale.” I’m blessed with gifted and talented teammates who cast the safety net wide tonight and let me roll about in it.

The hard part about all of this came after the show. I was not pleased with my performance, as is very often the case, but I had to interact with people who were entertained despite my private neuroses and wished to share their compliments with me. Tonight it seemed even worse than usual. It came from all sides. A teammate said I was “on fire.” Napier, my poor beleaguered scene partner, had no problem with my work. A half dozen different people sought me out outside the theater to praise me. One of the people in the Tuesday group I’ve been coaching saw it and thought it was great. Berrebbi said he wanted to work with me. (I’m not sure if I should be flattered or terribly terribly frightened.) Several female friends and acquaintances showed polite physical affection along with their compliments of my performance. One woman I met tonight was so effusive with her praise that it clearly crossed the line into overt flirtation, which I can barely handle when I’m self-aware, but was far more awkward when I was deep inside my head cataloging what I had done wrong. At least I could take solice in and retain self-respect from the dressing-down I got from Delaney in notes. I knew it was coming halfway through the first scene. Joe was sitting next to Delaney, and he knew it too. I did bad improv. And I “got away with it.”

Probably won’t be the last time it happens, either. I forget who gave me this advice, but someone once told me that when you think you sucked but people compliment you anyway, you have to suck it up and politely accept the compliments and deal with it quietly. It’s clearly sound advice. I need work on that.