DIARY
I’ve had several dreams in the past week, but until last night, I haven’t remembered what I’ve dreamt in any detail.
Circumstances had put me in Flint for a while, and an actor had dropped out of the play at Flint Youth Theatre, so they’d called and invited me to take his place. The situation was impossible; many people were there who’ve dropped off the face of the Earth, or who have had falling-outs with each other: Josh, the Serrs, the Nicolais… and people I haven’t seen in years and years. Everyone was cheerful and delighted and gorgeous, so the whole thing was basically a nostalgia-fest. At the same time, it wasn’t a total cleaver reunion; several people remained conspicuously absent: Bree, Demetrius, Katie, and Perrico. Jermaine. Zahiyah. Jeff. Walter directed the play.
I’ve never been able to chase these people from my brain. I get occasion reports on some of them through the grapevine… I talk to Katie often enough… whenever I’m in town I stop by FYT, and sometimes we go out for a drink.
This was a group of young people that had expressed a sort of durability, and remained close for several years after the intervention of college, career, and familial crisises. We were finally distanced by the Usual.
Anyway, the dream was sort of a Hip-Pop version of the play Electric Folderol, which was once performed at my high school, as far as I can tell. I played a suite of characters but was in the first of four “clusters,” meaning I had substantial parts with considerable lines.
About mid-dream a crisis materialized in that I arrived at rehearsal (the walls and cushions were lima-bean green, and apple trees stood between Bower and the planetarius), and had forgotten my script. Kathryn (with whom my last words, exchanged over four years ago, were bitter) and I were working together, trying to figure how we might share her script although our scenes were placed close together.
I found my script in my backpack. At the back of the space, before the run-through, I went and sat with Walter and the SM and listened to a TV jingle on headphones, while watching a little toy screen light up, and tried to sing along. I did embarassingly bad. No problem. “It’s my hearing loss,” I said. They’d give the song at the end out to one of the other actors. Everything proceeded smoothly.
Fast forward to the play. In grand FYT style, cheerful techno music flooded the auditorium as the lights dimmed. The curtains pulled back, whimsical shapes and bubbles and boxes swirled acorss the stage for several minutes, then the lights dimmed further as the curtain came back down. Then, when the music had faded completely, the curtain lifted again, and the play began.