The Working Actor

(Takes deep breath)

On Friday, July 22, my actress Maria Romine and I drove the 9 1/2 hours from St. Louis to Athens, Georgia, where on Saturday I gave a presentation on the show business of writing, and where I walked in a nearby cemetery in 110 degree heat index learning my lines for some of the ten different scripts we're producing in the next month and where a security guard stopped and drove me to campus when the cemetery closed, the old guy pointing out where all his family was buried in a Southern accent so thick I could hardly understand what he was saying, and where in the evening Maria and I performed Murder on the Disoriented Express, a show we hadn't done in two years, and then we got up early for Mass on Sunday and went to a nearby church where the Mass was all about some blonde, who stood at the lectern and told us what the homily was going to be about, and then after communion told us what the homily had been about except she dumbed it down to a point where I felt like I was watching Mr. Rodgers and then we got in our car and drove fourteen hours to Galena, Illinois, near Wisconsin, got up early the next morning and performed Mayberry R.I.P., a show we hadn't done in three years, finished, and drove six hours back to St. Louis, where on Wednesday morning I got up at 3:30 am to catch a 6:00 am flight to New England where I performed three shows on a train in Vermont with new actress Jenna Sullivan, both of us exhausted by projecting and running around sweating, with a quick return to St. Louis for a fund raiser performance Saturday night of a double-show of Mayberry R.I.P. (Act One in room A, followed by Act One in room B, followed by Act Two in room A, followed by Act Two in room B, followed by the Solution in room A, followed by the Solution in room B) in Carlinville, Illinois, doing a script I spent all morning adapting with jokes about local Carlinville politics, and during which I ran into the corner of a podium in room B while making my exit, knocking the wind out of me and leaving a nasty bruise and probably breaking a rib, and where we got a standing ovation (in room B), drove home and got up on Monday to begin a week where we try to fit in our only three rehearsals for G. K. Chesterton's play Magic, which we will be performing at this year's Chesterton Conference, before we leave for Wichita, Kansas (a six hour drive) where my cast will be performing The Great Adventure, in addition to the premiere performance of The Body of Christ (which we spent three days rehearsing in mid-July) and where on Sunday I'll join them to perform The Call (which we've done only once, back in April), but before which I will head to Paducah, Kentucky to perform Who Wants to Murder a Millionaire with Andrea Purnell (with whom I've never done the show before)- three hours down and three hours back - heading to Duluth, Minnesota (a ten hour drive) the following weekend to do a fund raiser for the Women's Care Center and a week of shows on the North Shore Scenic Railroad, after which we drive to New York for a performance at the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate - a show in which I play Dave's part, Dave plays Kaiser's part, and Erik plays my part - but today I woke up at 7:08 (because my alarm didn't go off) for a 7:10 interview on the Son Rise Morning Show on Sacred Heart Radio with Brian Patrick, who talked to me about distributism for twenty minutes, even though I thought we'd talk mostly about Theater of the Word.