Daytimes up here are easy: breakfast, cleaning, commute, show, lunch, show, rehearsal, commute, dinner, hanging out- It's hard work, but the routine and the company are soothing and a lot of fun.
Night-times, it's harder not to think about the end of work up here and the new life that's waiting for me back home. Okay, it's not just that that's on my mind. There's a lot of stuff, both here-and-now and future, to mull over. There is so much to think about, and it bubbles up into the forefront of my mind when I'm trying to sleep. The night before last, sleep was so long in coming that my eyes had a permanently red sheen all yesterday, and working up the energy for 2 shows and a rehearsal felt like swimming through a muddy bog. My brain literally felt fried. It always makes me laugh when I watch shows like "24" and the hero's been up for a full 24 hours and he's still saving the world; I'd be curled up in the fetal position, sobbing... and that's just if things were going normally- I can't imagine what I'd do in a crisis.
Fast forward to today, and 10 hours' sleep makes life look a lot more bearable... Here I sit, in my 19th-century Irish whore's costume, plugged into the 21st century with the aid of my laptop and the theatre's wireless internet. The 2nd show begins in about 15 minutes. I have an unshakeable feeling that I am exactly where I need to be right now, and that makes the midnight fears- about things like moving, and housing, and love- feel very far away indeed. I tip my water bottle in salute to Johanna Maguire, the Irish whore in question, whose life was, by all accounts, both brutal and short, and whose indomitable spirit I get to try and portray in our 4-o'clock show, 6 days a week. And then I shut my laptop, take a deep breath, and step onto the stage.
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