Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Seven ducks preening and drying off in the sun.

Nine ducks.

Ten ducks.

Eleven ducks.

Nap time.

After a second allergy-ridden day, I left rehearsal a bit early. I felt yucky. After a couple of hours in the apartment, I strolled across the street to the park, camera in hand, and quickly became entranced by the ducks. They glided upon the water and one by one, they stopped, looked at their friends who had decided to spend some time out of the water, swam to the edge of the pond, checked out which opening in the line-up was best and jumped up and out of the water. I took these photos from across the pond because I didn’t want to scare them or upset their routine.

After all ducks have to rest, you know. They can’t swim endlessly. Who am I to intrude on their downtime?

Still feeling stuffy and eye-itchy. Still trying to figure out when I can make a short visit home. Every time the stage manager and I figure out a possible window of opportunity, the director changes his mind about the schedule. Since he’s directing both plays, it is surely his right to do that. But it keeps throwing a spanner in the works of my need to get home….just for a couple of days, really, that’s not asking too much, is it? The best opportunity would have been over last weekend, but we all know what happened then.

Yet another of my former students is in town. She’s acting in a play in a small theater that is literally a half block from my apartment. She’s one of my favorites, though I know I’m not supposed to have favorites. When I moved to San Diego to teach in the graduate program there, my boss and I traveled to NYC, Chicago and San Francisco to audition students for the program. The San Francisco auditions were our last stop on the tour and after two long days of interviews, we waited for our last candidate. She didn’t show up. We knew she was flying down from Seattle, so we waited. And waited. Finally, I took the elevator down to the building lobby thinking she might have been confused as to which floor we were on. Then I tried another floor. As the  elevator doors opened, a completely harried redhead stepped into the elevator, a panicked look in her eyes. I’d seen her headshot, so I knew who she was. “Erika?” I said. She made eye contact with me and practically shouted, “Yes!” in relief. I introduced myself and said I’d been looking for her, which prompted a long, breathless explanation of a delayed flight, a long cab ride, of having no way to contact us, though she tried and tried to call our offices (it was a weekend) and absolute fear that she had missed her opportunity to audition for us. I hugged her, told her everything was okay, and instructed her to go off by herself, take some deep breaths and when she felt ready to audition, we’d be there.

Her audition blew us away. She’s incredibly talented. Thank goodness we waited. We knew immediately that she would be in our program. In the 17 years since she graduated, she has worked consistently in the theater, always getting high praise for her acting.

So: the other day, one of the younger actors in Macbeth was telling me that he wanted to see the new play opening at TheaterWorks and he mentioned the title. That night I was on Facebook and saw that Erika had written a status update saying that her current show, with the same title, was having its first preview that night. She didn’t mention where this was taking place, but I thought this was too coincidental not to investigate. Yep. Sure enough, she’s here. We haven’t seen each other yet because we’re awfully busy and on different schedules, but we will.

Hartford seems to be the place to meet up with my former students. Who knew?

Happy Friday.