The magic thing about this place is that as soon as I identify an issue I’m having with the work, I’m surrounded by answers. Last night, I was wiped out and despairing, feeling like I had been tired for four days in a row, wondering how on earth I was ever going to get caught up on sleep when there is literally no time for it. This morning when I rolled out of bed after 7 hours of sleep (a good night here) I was bleary-eyed and lethargic. During the run, I kept up with the crowd for longer than usual before lagging behind as I usually do. But this time, as I struggled to keep moving and the group in front got farther and farther ahead, Matthew came alongside me to encourage me, get me to speed up, which sometimes is inspiring and other times utterly aggravating. It was somewhere in between for me this morning, until, as we dodged through the woods with the rest of the group barely in sight, he said, “You’re holding out on me, Alissa! I know it in my heart! The game is to catch up!” And disappeared behind me to encourage the last lagger.

Holding out? I’m dying here! But his belief that I had more strength in me than I was displaying was encouraging and downright flattering, and I wanted to believe it was true. And I tried moving my arms and legs faster–and hey, they obeyed! And every time I started flagging (ie every 15 seconds or so) I said to myself ‘there’s more there’ and reached into my core, into what I started visualizing as a clear ball of energy that was far from depleted, which I could tap at any time. It worked as a series of constant rejuvinations, and I ran harder than I have before after so long. It was also mentally exhausting.

What was astonishing was the level of my own resistance to this practice. Over and over, the other voice in my head tried to shout out the productive one. ‘I’m done…I have to pee…I hate this…I’m a terrible runner.’ And there was an actual struggle that I actually percieved between the two impulses–one that insisted I had tons more energy to give, and one that wanted no more than a good excuse to stop and rest. But the first voice clearly had the facts on her side, because I was in fact still running, and clearly capable of running faster and longer than I had been insisting to myself what my limits were. It wasn’t fun…but I could do it just fine.

Since this morning, I’ve had an incredible amount of energy. I burned through the morning training, bounced through music, worked without hesitation with my hazy ideas in design, and though I have personal work time now, I have no desire to go and take a nap.

Last night, we had a formal talk with Stacey, the founder and director of Double Edge, the only one here who’s been with it for all 25 years straight (maybe with the exception of Carroll, who has left and returned but always kinda had her foot in the door.) She concieves of theatre as something that happens when you do the impossible. If it’s not impossible, why should anyone bother to see it? It’s a daunting sort of notion. But there’s also this idea that you have to be other, you have to push yourself to the brink of what you know your limitations are and then go right past them. Oh! And another thing she said was that expectations for yourself are deadly. Hopes, dreams, desires, all these things are valuable, but expectations will kill any chance you have of becoming something that you cannot conceive of.

She said a lot more that was inspiring, and I wrote a bunch of it down. This place is utterly insane. But as one of her co-founders (no longer with the company) allegedly said, “You’re not gonna make it if you aren’t crazy.”

Amen.
Alissa