The Honeymoon

Posted August 4th, 2005 by Sean Williams

The honeymoon I actually went on some 12 years ago now was actually a really uncomfortable thing. I was broke, the woman I was with was “not very good with money” and I actually find most vacations boring. I hate going places where there’s nothing to do. I mean, Jesus Christ, anyone who had my life would say I’m on vacation all the time. I almost never do anything I don’t want to do every single second of my life, so no wonder I find vacations boring as shit.

That being said, every cast I’ve ever been in has had a honeymoon. And then, after the honeymoon, the honeymoon is over. I would say, with this particular production, the honeymoon has ended. Every time I speak to Mac, we talk about nothing but the show, and the moments when we aren’t talking about the show, we talk as fast as we can to get the jokes and the news out of the way so we can get back to talking about the show.

Jordana and I talk about nothing but the show. Every once in a while we’ll talk about other stuff, but the show is basically it. And yes, in rehearsal, we’re ahead of schedule. It is alarming and lovely that the cast is basically off-book for the entire show right now, they know all the choreography and the blocking and they know all the music and their lines. And we don’t open until two weeks from tomorrow.

Holy CrapNuts. Two weeks from tomorrow…

But, we’re running on steam, the three of us, and we’re running out of steam. Lindsay came up with a relatively dumb idea the other night, but instead of just saying “that’s a relatively dumb idea” which is how we’ve all managed to speak to each other, I just flipped out like a drunk ninja and started in on my fucking routine, which fortunately I’m able to smother most of the time otherwise I would be one boring shithead.

Our days start with phone calls, with fires that need to either be put out or started, and our days end a few hours after rehearsal. So, when I’m in rehearsal and the actors are screwing around, I want to boil my own testicles. It’s infuriating.

That being said, they are actually ahead of schedule, the only sense of panic comes from the fact that the producers are behind schedule and we don’t really have any help. We have plenty of *advice*, we have lots of big ideas thrown at us, but each big idea requires twenty phone calls, and each one takes minutes, and at the end of the day, we’re all out of minutes, and we hang up the phones and keep going.

I’m sort of melancholy about all of this because my whole family is together in Utah. Not just my family, but every cousin who draws their breath because of my grandma, they are all getting together this weekend, and I’m the only one not there. Of course, if this was a play or a movie, and the main character had the following problem “Larry could spend three days in New York surrounded by artists, homsexuals and Jews, or he could spend three days in Utah with his Christian cousins and their babies”, then I would think it was pretty ham-handed, right down to the red-state/blue state obviousness of locale… but that was the decision that was facing me and I simply couldn’t find any way to do both.

Next time, we’ll have just a little bit more money. Next time the three of us will be able to say, “Call that woman from the New Yorker that Jordana spoke with, she seemed really sweet.” This time, the interns and the production staff, the gophers and the grips, the ASMs and the PR reps – they’re all just us.

I’m not bitching, I swear to God. I’m just saying, it’s like spending a day sailing and realizing, as you’re making your way back to shore, this would all be so much easier if there was an engine in the boat.