Catch-Up & Chaos
I've been failing a bit at the regular blog plan I set down for myself. It's been a bit of a whirlwind since November with finals, holidays, no wifi in the hotel, blog drafts vanishing, exploding water heaters, frantic moves, and the latest development of purple water coming through the pipes. Just the day to day living has become a fun adventure. I won't lie, the lack of wifi was nice. I wasn't reachable after hours for needless questions, just waking up family members asking to Skype at 3am, new work emails, or further probes into my reports that could definitely have waited until morning... The silence can be deafening, but sometimes very nice. We hit our halfway point through the season exactly two weeks ago. I'm just about 65 days from my flight home. Which is mind-boggling.
We have two of our staff back this week who we haven't seen since November. Jarred, our rigger, didn't immediately recognize me. Ruth, our director, and I are having coffee this week. Neither of us can believe how far everything has come in only a few months. Things that used to cause me so much stress have become second nature. Jarred and I ran a safety check through our show that has 13 different truss moves in 10 minutes. The first time we ran the show was with an audience and I was sweating the entire time to hit each cue perfectly. I ran the show this past Saturday with my feet propped up while my ASM and I discussed our plans for our day off. And yes, the cues were hit perfectly. No sweat.
Not to say there aren't other challenges to face and keep us on constant alert. The revolve mysteriously lost power between safety checks and the show it was needed for, after a moment of panic at the realization that this will not be fixed in time, the professional problem solver took over and solutions were made. Our cast is amazing and (mostly) trusts me, when I send on an actor to tell them how we're handling this mess, they do it. Those watching the monitors backstage were impressed with the cover by the dancers, the audience was unaware, and we had it fixed by the time the dancers were offstage. Too late for that show, but the next one would go on as planned.
Dubai has become a weird routine of chaos, insane production quality, bits of panic, lots of laughter, and exhausted bodies crawling into bed at the end of the day. It's weird to think how normal my life in the States was comparatively, and I am not one to live normally. I'm nervous to see what happens when it's time to return home. My bosses here think I'll be bored. They might be right. I also might just be too busy sleeping it off to notice!