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About a month ago, a friend of mine made a noncontroversial statement on Twitter about the potential dangers of a common over-the-counter pain medication. People, including one uniquely obsessed doctor, harassed this person for days. Round the clock, non-stop QTing and long threads about why this commonly known fact—that Tylenol can damage your liver—is wrong, dangerous misinformation of the worst kind, and how the person who made the claim is an anti-vaxer.

The resulting pile-on had nothing to do with the individual being transgender (which xie is) or an anti-vaxer (which xie is not). It was just because of the extreme anti-vaccine position xie hadn’t taken, which was harming everyone. The pile-on was for the greater good.

A little while later, the same individual tweeted that some writers have sensory processing difficulties or developmental disorders that make reading for pleasure difficult and that commonly-dispensed wisdom about how much a writer should read could be construed as coming from an ableist viewpoint. Like with the Tylenol tweets, people were eager to jump on this individual.

But not because xie is trans.

In both cases, simple tweets became “the discourse,” and with the discourse came the distortion. “Did you see the YA author who said Tylenol is poison and your doctors are lying to you?” “Did you see the YA author who said reading is ableist?” That the person in question was not a YA author and had never said anything of the sort didn’t matter. This individual became the “main character” of Twitter over wholly uncontroversial statements that were made controversial by Twitter users with a bone-deep need to be furious about the things this person never said.

It had nothing to do with this individual being transgender.

Except for when it did, of course. Like months ago, when this individual painstakingly reviewed an advanced copy of an outrageously transphobic book. That’s when author and real-life Veruca Salt, Lauren Hough, stepped in and did what Lauren Hough does best: made everything about herself. This all concluded with Hough insisting that a prestigious literary award had been snatched away from her, despite never having been nominated for it in the first place.

The pile-on my friend faced only got worse, aided by mainstream media, who picked up the story of Hough’s “revoked nomination” without mentioning that Hough had simply assumed she would be handed this prize by default (Hough is the author who, some time ago, threw a days-long tantrum because people dared to give her books four stars instead of five). My friend, who isn’t a YA author, was branded a YA author at this time—a Twitter code word for someone who is the worst kind of hysterical drama seeker, a person who should be avoided and derided at all costs. The brigade rode in, eager to scream about freedom of speech, Nazi book bans, and to question whether this “YA author” had even read the offending book (which xie had, in a detailed Twitter thread and blog post, which became tragically invisible to anyone who disagreed with xer).

The fact that the individual in question is transgender was superfluous to the conversation, of course, and if the resulting widespread internet attention from the media caused an increase in harassment of this individual, that was a punishment well-deserved. It was the principle of the thing. A person who reviews a book is a person who wants to ban a book, and anyone who reviews a book is only doing so in an attempt to ruin the careers and lives of worthy, non-YA writing authors.

Nobody was simply using a silly reason to justify their own transphobia. Xie is a danger to the written word and freedom of speech.

Last night, I opened Twitter and found that Lockheed Martin was trending. With my friend’s name under it. It was the top trending topic in my country.

As it turned out, this individual works for Lockheed Martin. Making drones that kill children. Specifically, xie writes code to increase the lethality of drones targeting children in the Middle East. And xie makes upwards of $400,000 annually doing this work for the military-industrial complex while lying about xer financial situation to scam people with crowdfunding. Even worse, xer job slaughtering innocent babes in their mothers’ arms was the result of nepotism, as xer entire family works for Lockheed Martin in highly paid executive positions. And this awful person, this YA author, has been lying about it for years.

At least, that’s what Twitter would have you believe. Because in reality, this non-YA author works ten hours a week from home keeping software licenses up-to-date. A job this non-YA author can do from home as a disabled person, a job xie got through family connections, probably offered by a relative concerned about this person’s well-being and ability to live independently (and, at the time, xer’s ability to care for a disabled family member). A job that only pays the astronomical $400,000 annually because people on Twitter decided their lie about it was fact; a simple Google search reveals that the highest paid non-executives at Lockheed Martin make a quarter of that figure working full-time.

But does that matter when a person some find annoying on Twitter is outed as being, in the words of one gleeful user, “literally a cop”?

No. Because there are reasons this person needs to be punished. None of these reasons have to do with a particular website that routinely targets and doxes transgender people. Sure, the information currently circulating came from their site. Sure, they’ve targeted this person specifically because xie is transgender and uses neopronouns and tweets “cringe.” And yes, the people on that disgusting forum are currently celebrating that a trans man might commit suicide due to their doxing efforts. But this is about integrity. This is about making the truth known.

On Twitter, making the truth known always involves bending and shaping that truth to fit around whatever narrative has been embraced, but always for the greater good. “This person works in an extremely limited position dealing with software licenses for a company with defense contracts” isn’t bad enough. You have to streamline it. You have to remove all context—the availability of work for disabled people, the hurdles to employment faced by transgender people, the notoriously hostile state the individual lives in, and what the individual’s job entails—for the greater good. This person is bad. Unredeamable. And they must be punished. Whatever lies and exaggerations made to pursue that goal are immaterial as long as that goal is reached. For the greater good.

Critics of this individual were more than enthusiastic about their campaign for justice. They’d always known that their personal opinion of this individual was right. They just could never put into words what made this person so thoroughly evil. Maybe it was because xie was the ringleader of the crusade against Isabel Fall, a claim that lacks evidence but sounds incredibly good when justifying one’s behavior over the past sixteen hours. Or because xie’s outrageous censorship campaign caused Lauren Hough to have that prize she hadn’t won yanked from her hands by a blood-thirsty social justice mob. Xie was always crowdfunding; something about that is just annoying, right? Plus, xie was a “woke scold,” a person who obnoxiously and audaciously suggests that marginalized people deserve human rights. And get this: xie calls xer spouse “kissmate.” That’s just cringe. Far too precious and cute. That’s certainly harming the human race in some vile way.

There were so many reasons—none of them transphobic!—that doxing this person, accusing xer of lying, and driving xer off Twitter wasn’t just justified. It was righteous. And definitely not transphobic! Plus, finding out how horrible xer’s job is retroactively makes all the past harassment okay!

The way Twitter reckons it, securing software licenses for a defense contractor’s offices is no different than pushing the big red button to detonate a city block full of innocent civilians. Sure, some of these people work for companies that are arguably just as evil as Lockheed Martin, albeit in other ways. Some spend their time online defending members of the United States government from attacks by the right-wing mobs. Some of them have or had jobs or internships working for the United States government themselves. But without xer keeping all those software licenses in line, the United States would be wholly incapable of committing war crimes. And if xie is forced off Twitter and hopefully driven to suicide, world peace will be restored. There is no need for, nor room for, nuance in this discussion. Xie is, after all, making millions of dollars being, in the words of that astonishingly rational thinker I quoted above, “literally a cop.”

Which leaves me to wonder… if xer working for Lockheed Martin part-time means xie is directly responsible for every death caused by the U.S. government’s imperial crimes, what are the people aligning themselves with Kiwi Farms guilty of by association?

Hmm? What was that? Oh, Kiwi Farms? Probably time to note that the persistent backlash against this individual has been driven since 2016 by a website that defended its connection to the mass shooting in Christchurch, NZ (a “shithole country” with “faggot laws”) and whose members have been linked to at least three online harassment campaigns that ended in the death by suicide of their targets. The entire site exists to mock, harass, and dox people, especially transgender, autistic, and fat people, but simply being ugly or annoying can serve as reason enough to target someone and harass them, ideally to death.

While I would never doubt the righteousness of people who have turned away from the war criminal in question, I do wonder what some of them would say if they saw how their actions were being viewed by the forum that composed the jaunty tune they’re all dancing to.

“RIP Bozo, puffin on that enby war criminal pack […] maybe anna will commit unalive in roblox and kiwi farms can take credit.”

“I didn’t know anything about Ana until earlier today when all of the other trannies started shrieking for his head as a war criminal and ganged up on him until he left Twitter. The fact this happened due to information gleaned from a Kiwifarms doxing, the site they claim makes you a fascist if you even dare to peek, is perhaps the most hilarious thing I have seen all month.”

“All the YA twitter lefties are ignoring the fact that we’re the ones who got the dox lol. They always do when it conveniences them. Is KF le evil nazi forum or not, guys? Pick a side. Lockheed Martin tho”

“I saw the screeching on twitter and knew exactly where they had gotten their deets. I love how KF lays these little mines on the internet, they stay silent for years just ready to explode whenever the woke mob decide is time to eat their own.”

Phew. It’s a good thing that none of this outsized fury, public mockery, gleeful celebration of doxing, and vicious harassment had anything to do with a years-long hate campaign run by a website known for its body count. Because that might mean the outrage was driven by something other than righteousness and the shining moral purity of everyone involved. It might mean that this time, the Twitter rage machine was driven by, if not transphobia, the desperate need to have one’s own biases confirmed.

If you participated, don’t worry. Those doubts you’re having about whether or not you’re a fool who’s been led into a targeted harassment campaign by your own easily fed ego? Let them go. I mean, you’re just firmly aligned with a web forum full of people who pat themselves on the back for the suicides they’ve directly caused. It’s not like you have an extremely limited part-time job working from home for Lockheed Martin. You’re not a monster.

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The @Jenny_Trout Twitter account is now updates only. You can follow it to keep up with release dates and new blog posts. You can also join me on Discord.

I may have picked the wrong show to do a show diary for, my friendoroonies. Or the right one? I’m not sure.

After I returned from my annual UP writing retreat, the vibe at rehearsals seemed… off. The production moved from our rehearsal space and into the theater and on the first night there was no air conditioning. So, I chalked it up to that. But the next night, it wasn’t any better. There was just weird and awful tension. On Thursday, my private messages were lighting up: the theater board had called an emergency meeting for voting members only; as I’m not a voting member, I didn’t go to the meeting. On Saturday, the board announced that our director had resigned.

What the fuuuuuuu…

And the thing is, through all of this? I had felt something was off but I was really more concerned about the perpetually broken bathroom door in the auditorium’s dressing rooms. I’m part of the disability inclusion committee on the theater board and I am absolutely unhinged (pun intended) over this broken door. It’s on the accessible toilets and you can get accidentally locked in, right? Well, I hear tell that the auditorium facilities people fixed the door. NOPE. No siree, it’s just as broken as ever. So, my personal vendetta against the door means I guess I wasn’t paying close attention to whatever was happening around me. What little I do know, I’m not sharing because I’m a board member and I would like to stay that way. But last Monday was the first rehearsal of “push week” and we had zero of directors. That would have been a shock, I think, even if I hadn’t been blindsided while I was caught up in my bathroom crusade.

I hesitated to write anything about this because it was so bizarre. This has happened one other time in my entire community theater history and everything went okay, but I was like… I’m not gonna blog about this right now. I’m not sure how everything is going to shake out.

We are now three rehearsals away from opening night. And the show is…

Magnificent.

In the face of adversity, everyone stepped up. There’s always been a spirit of community in this community theater (which isn’t always the case, as diehard theater people will tell you), but everyone pulled together like a magnetic jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly, instead of four people in the costuming work area, there are six to seven every night. The scene shop is stacked with volunteers. The most commonly overheard phrase I’ve encountered has been “how can I help?” The sudden shock of wow, we’re really in a tough spot seemed to throw everyone headlong into enthusiasm and optimism in the face of adversity. And it’s paid off enormously.

It’s not necessarily the way I would have liked it to happen, obviously. I’m not recommending this to other theater companies like, “hey, you know what really makes a show pop? Losing your director two weeks before opening night.” But the show has not only gone on, it’s gone well, and I know we’re going to knock it out of the park on Friday night.

That’s right. It’s June, and that means I’m once again heading up to Gay, Michigan, to chill for a week of isolation with my friends. You know what you can do while I’m gone? You can read my Radish serial, Taken By The Alpha King, which has hit 2.5 MILLION views!

I will return rested, with more freckles than I had when I left, and ready to rock, in a week.

Have you seen the absolutely bonkers show I Was Prey? I started watching it on Discovery+ and I became hooked. The marketing explains that the show “recounts the hauntingly true stories of people who found themselves in a life or death situation, face-to-face with a dangerous animal.”

What they should have said was, “recounts the hauntingly true stories of people who made fucking terrible choices and ended up getting mauled by something. Come look at this guy’s stump.”

The formula of the show is pretty simple to understand. An episode tells two stories, cutting back and forth between them to keep viewers on the edges of their proverbial seats. Most episodes are what Mr. Jen calls “surf n’ turf,” because one tale will take place on land (a bear, for example) and the other in the water (almost certainly a shark), and they’re told in first person by the, well, prey. While bears, sharks, and gators lead the pack, you also get the occasional moose or hippo. Frequently, the stories are pretty hilarious. One time, a raccoon pulled a lady’s pants down. Another time, a man was shot twice by his son-in-law while being actively mauled by a grizzly (“Skeet saved my life,” the man tearfully recounts about the man who, I cannot possibly stress this enough, shot a person being attacked by a grizzly bear. Twice). A scientist with knowledge of animal anatomy shared the stunningly bad-ass realization he had while a shark ate his legs: “I know how to get that eye out.”

The gentleman did, indeed, go on to rip a shark’s eye out.

While the individual circumstances of the stories are what really make them pop (a man bitten by a rattlesnake realizes he left his cellphone in his locked truck; a ranger decides that today is a good day to leave the bear spray at the office), there are a lot of common themes and events that occur in each episode and that’s part of what makes it fun to watch. It’s one thing to laugh at the misfortunes of another (in my defense, these people survived), it’s another to be able to indulge in running jokes with the people who watch the show with you. It gives it that extra bit of oomph to place hypothetical bets on whether or not this shark attack segment will result in a dramatic stump revelation, or if the mountain lion’s breath will be described as smelling like death.

These hallmarks of the show give Mr. Jen and I so much joy, we decided to make I Was Prey into a drinking game. Lately I just haven’t enjoyed drinking alcohol. I do, however, enjoy watching I Was Prey while apocalyptically high, so I’m turning this into an edibles game. If you live in a place where you have legal access to marijuana-infused edible treats, consider the following recommended “doses” of treats for each event.

Unofficial and Unaffiliated I Was Prey Edibles Game
Every time one of these events occurs, take the suggested dose of THC. You will get fucked up.

• “It seemed like a lifetime.” Any time the survivor describes time as slowing/freezing/standing still, says it felt like a lifetime (“I was only under the water for probably thirty seconds… but it felt like a lifetime.”) or an eternity, take 5mg.
  
• When the survivor mentions how bad an animal’s mouth stinks, take 5mg. If they specifically mention that it smells like “rotten meat” or “death,” take 10mg.
  
• When an episode isn’t a surf n’ turf, i.e., if there are two attacks on land and none involving water or vice versa, take 20mg.
  
• When the animal returns after the initial attack to strike again, take 10mg for the second attack, 5mg for each subsequent attack.
  
• “Suddenly, I’m on the ground.” When the survivor describes being knocked down by the land predator, take 5mg.
  
• “I felt something bump me.” When the survivor describes the first hit from a water-based predator, take 5mg
  
• If the episode is bearless, take 20mg
  
• If the episode is sharkless, take 20 mg
  
• If the episode has neither bears nor sharks, take 50mg
  
• “I knew I was going to die.” Take 5mg at the moment in the story that the survivor realized they were in mortal peril.
  
• Anytime the title cards are in passive voice, i.e., “Sally is being attacked by a mountain lion” instead of “A mountain lion is attacking Sally,” take 5mg.
  
• If the survivor dramatically reveals their horrible scar, take 5mg.
  
• If the survivor dramatically reveals their missing limb, take 20mg.
  
• “I could feel his teeth in the back of my skull.” Whenever the survivor describes teeth in their skull, take 5mg.
  
• When the survivor punches the animal, take 5mg.
  
• When the punches are underwater, take 10mg.
  
• When the punches do nothing, take 5mg.
  
• When the survivor is wounded by something other than the animal during the attack. For example, Skeet, who shot his father-in-law twice while the poor guy wrestled with a grizzly, or the guy who stabbed himself with his pocket knife while a mountain lion attacked him. Take 20mg.
  
• “I had to survive for my kids.” Everyone on this show has to survive for something. When they state what that thing is, take 5mg, unless…
  
• The survivor’s motivation to survive the attack is their dog. If that’s the case, take 10mg.
  
• The survivor accidentally left behind life-saving equipment. If, for example, the ranger forgot his bear spray that day, take 5mg.
  
• The survivor intentionally left behind life-saving equipment. If, for example, the ranger intentionally left his bear spray in his vehicle because he’d never needed it before, despite being deep in bear country, take 10mg

You will likely ingest between 100mg and 200mg if you find the right episode. I recommend closing your eyes, scrolling, and surprising yourself. And if you’re not into substances, making it a hydration game and take a drink of water instead of edibles. Just be careful not to get water-drunk.

Does anybody in Trout Nation watch I Was Prey? Let me know if you check out the show or try the game.

I may have picked the absolute worst show to keep a show diary for, to be perfectly honest, becasue at this early stage in rehearsals, there’s not a lot to report. Much of that is due to the fact that I’m a villager. There are only three villager scenes, so I’m not called so often. Especially since we’ve absolutely crushed our blocking in record time. Which is good, because…

Covid shut-down: Mid-week three, we shut down due to a high number of covid exposures in the cast. Not everyone turned up positive, but we took no chances. All rehearsals were shut down at the end of last week, through the Memorial Day holiday. We still have some cast members out, but a five-day quarantine hopefully mitigated transmission. I’ll be masked up until tech week because I’m not taking chances.

No one throws it back like Gaston: Dance rehearsal for “Mob Song” got me and my friend Kaleigh in a goofy mood. Maybe it was the heat of the rehearsal space? Maybe it was hearing that song over and over and over again? During the number, the female-coded villagers leave the stage while the male-coded mob goes to the Beast’s castle. With nothing to do on the sidelines, Kayleigh and I amused ourselves by twerking to the song (which we weren’t singing that night; when we’re learning a dance, we do it to a recording). The thing is, I didn’t remember that there’s a line where Gaston yells something about “grab all the booty you can find.” When that line hit, the laugh that exploded out of me was like a foghorn and an airhorn having a loud three way with a megaphone. It was completely unprofessional, immature, and so hilarious that I don’t regret a moment of it.

Our rehearsal space is so hot. Just oppressively hot. Anyone who has done theater knows that your rehearsal space is always going to be either way too hot or way too cold. There is no perfect temperature in any rehearsal venue anywhere. Yesterday, I spent our ten out in my car, blasting my pits with the a/c.

“Our ten” means our ten-minute break. Here’s some backstage lingo for yous: during rehearsals, you actually do hear “take five” or “take ten.” And when it’s over, they’re like, “that’s five,” or “that’s ten.” It’s not a cliche, it’s actually how the stage manager talks. And it can be very confusing, because you have conversations like:

Me: Hey, are we still on our ten?

Someone: Yes.

This might lead you to believe you’ve got ten minutes. But you’ve actually only got three minutes left to play Candy Crush on your phone, so the ten is meaningless. It just refers to how much time you were given.

It still doesn’t feel like this show is actually happening. Obviously, it is happening, and things are going super well. But since this was our summer 2020 show and it’s been canceled twice, I’m having a hard time believing we’re really doing it. It just became this mythical, far-off dream or something. After Sister Act: The Musical, where I was called practically every night from the first rehearsal on, it’s surreal to only have to show up twice a week. I’m looking forward to the entire cast coming together for full run-throughs, which starts during week seven. It’ll feel a little bit more like I’m actually in a show then. But honestly, having waited two years for this? I’m pretty sure I won’t believe we actually, finally got to do it until we’re tearing down the set.

due to the state of my country and events that have absolutely shattered my capacity for humor or joy or even baseline feelings of anything other than sorrow and anger, i’ll be taking this week off.

Need to catch up?

• What is The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp? 
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Prologue
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter One
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Two
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Three
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Four
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Five 
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Six 
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Seven
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Eight 
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Nine
• NSFW! The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Ten

For every single musical I’ve been in (and I’ve been in a super lot), the first rehearsals are always music rehearsals. The first week of Beauty and the Beast rehearsals for me covered two particular songs: “The Mob Song” and “Belle.”

I get to sing my favorite line!

In “The Mob Song” I’ve always loved the line, “We don’t like what we don’t understand/in fact it scares us/and this monster is mysterious at least.” Whoo hoo, my friends, whoo hoo, first sopranos sing on that line. One of my favorite things about being in an ensemble is that you often to get sing the most iconic songs. Also, sometimes having a featured role is pretty lonely; when we did The Wizard of Oz and I was the Emerald City Guard, I sang “Merry Old Land of Oz” and got some good laughs, but I was only in a few scenes and most of them were with The Four (our director’s shorthand for Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion), who had their own bond. The ensemble had their own relationships, too, so I always felt a little like the odd man out during that show. Not many rehearsals, no real chance to “hang out” with the rest of the cast, it was kind of isolating. This time around, I don’t have the spotlight, but I do get to have fun with my castmates and sing the songs that were the most fun to sing when I was a kid.

“Oh, Alan.”

Some of us in the cast are fresh off Sister Act: The Musical, which was also composed by Alan Menken. And during Sister Act, I had some real feelings about the music that, while incredible to listen to, was total ass to sing. For example, this was just one of my notes as Sister Mary Patrick:

During rehearsals, the musical director and I would often shake our heads and say, “Oh, Alan.” This has continued on into Beauty and the Beast, due to having the same musical director.

My cheese dreams were dashed.

Another fun aspect of theater is finding out which lyrics you’ve misheard over the years. But not this one. Oh, no. Not this one.

For years now, I’ve thought that in the end of “Belle,” someone was asking for, “some cheese/10 yards.” When I say years, I mean like THIRTY. For three decades, I’ve been periodically consumed with the idea of ten yards of cheese. Thirty feet of cheese, yous all. Imagine it. It’s absurd, but also admirable? And like… goal?

Well, guess what? The line isn’t, “some cheese/ten yards.” It’s “some cheese/a pound” and someone else just happens to be having a conversation at the same time that involves “ten yards” of something.

My world is irreparably shattered.

I made a new friend!

Of course, I don’t remember his name. Danny, maybe? I probably shouldn’t guess right here because I might accidentally use his real name and I said I wasn’t planning to do that. Drew? I don’t know. Anyway, I asked him if he was wearing eyeliner and told him that if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be happy for him. He was wearing eyeliner, so now we’re friends. He might not know that. The thing is, I was trying not to collect any more handsome friends because my friend Handsome Jack (real name, that I call him) once looked so spectacularly handsome that I didn’t know how to react and I spiked my phone like a football, right onto the parking lot pavement. I don’t have the kind of dough to just keep replacing phones.

A missed rehearsal

I should honestly say “the first missed rehearsal.” This theater is really good and nice about working with people with disabilities, so when I’ve been ill or having a bad pain day and I have to call off from rehearsal, I don’t feel like anyone will be shitty about it. I try hard not to miss rehearsals, but inevitably my disability interferes.

Of course, due to covid, we have people quarantined now. There were only two covid cases during Sister Act and considering the cast size of like, forty people or whatever? That’s pretty impressive. Also, neither of us got infected at rehearsals; we could both confirm exposure to infected persons/groups. It was totally wild. From what I understand, we go by the same protocol as Opera Grand Rapids, and it seems to be working for them and for us. I just very much appreciate that the organization is worried about keeping us safe.

Pancake Pre-Game

I’m not good at making smart choices. I am good at dragging otherwise smart people along with me on my bad choices. “I want pancakes,” I told my friend Anastasia (that’s a real name, she doesn’t care). “I’m going to have pancakes before rehearsal. Wanna come?”

Now, keeping in mind that my friend Anastasia is a PROFESSIONAL OPERA SINGER, for some reason she AGREED. And went to pancakes with me. And the pancakes were glorious.

But you know what wasn’t glorious? Trying to sing with a stomach full of pancakes. During warm-ups, I looked over to Anastasia and silently mouthed, “I’m gonna puke.”

I didn’t puke. But I did learn a lesson.

If I’m gonna eat a bunch of pancakes right before rehearsal, I have to remember to just pretend to sing.

See also: benefits of being in the ensemble.

The other day, I was thinking about the highs and lows of the recent production of Sister Act: The Musical that I was in (I was Sister Mary Patrick and I was fabulous) and how I wasn’t bright enough to write any of it down in my journal.

See, the thing is, between auditions for that show and the beginning of rehearsals, my BFF Jill died. And it sucked. And I stopped writing in my journal entirely and I didn’t want to go to rehearsals and I very much considered dropping the show completely. Cooler heads prevailed and I stayed in the show and I’m glad I did, but all those fun, quirky little things that happened during rehearsals that I would love to remember are gone now, lost to the holey memory fog of grief.

I’m still not ready to open up my journal and get back to it; it was a brand new, totally awesome notebook and I’m furious that Jill died only a few pages in, but even those few pages I did write were written by a person who used to be me. I’m still in that phase of trying to figure out who I am now, so there’s no point in ruining another notebook with a false start.

But then I was like, hey. You have a blog. And people who’ve never been in a show might really enjoy reading about what it’s like. And people who have been in shows might be interested in seeing what it’s like at my theater.

So, I’m gonna dump all my theater stuff here. With a few caveats. Unless otherwise noted, I’m not using the real names of any performers or staff or crew. And I’m not going to put a lot of juicy gossip or anything like that in here; I’m generally peripheral to off-stage drama. I’m the person people come to when they want to vent about someone else, and I don’t want anyone to worry that I’m going to put it on the blog. But I will talk about how I feel about things realistically and mention, you know. Appropriate stuff to mention.

Last night was the first cast meeting. You know how I just said I’m not going to say negative stuff? I’ll say negative stuff about cast meetings. I don’t care what theater I’m at, I loathe the cast meeting and I refuse to make it a secret. I especially loathe cast meetings that include a script read-through because a) we will be reading the damn script every night for like six weeks and b) let’s just get into it, I’m ready to go. Luckily, last night’s meeting didn’t have a read-through. It was the standard Center Stage Theater welcome night, where things get explained to newcomers and reiterated for people who’ve been there a while. We cover stuff like how nobody is allowed to be a dick, we’re a queer and disabled safe-space and your ass will get booted if you don’t respect that (not in those exact words, of course), and various fundraising and ticket-selling opportunities we’re doing to publicize the show.

I hate meetings sooooooooooo much. Generally, I take it as an opportunity to get some crochet time and zone out. That’s not to say I don’t care about my friends on all the various committees who speak at the meeting and put in some hard work, but the noise and fidgeting and heat and closeness of about two-hundred people crammed into a church basement is sensory hell. I don’t think anyone faults me for having a total shut down to cope.

Why are there so many people? Because CST casts every person who tries out, so long as they’re over six years old. It doesn’t matter if you’re disabled or neurodivergent, it doesn’t matter if you’ve never done theater before, it doesn’t matter if you’re 100 years old and someone needs to remind you that you’re currently on stage in a play, Mabel. If you audition, you’re in. We will find a way to put you on stage if you want to be there (and you’re willing to put in the time and effort).

One-hundred and eighty people auditioned for this show. As of last night, we had a total cast of like a hundred and twenty-eight. Some of those people are kids who have parents and guardians so. You know. It was crowded, and I knew that it would be going in and everything turned out fine if exhausting from an over-stimulation point of view. I’m not sure what size cast we’ll actually end up with; I know at least one person dropped after last night’s meeting because they hadn’t realized what an enormous time commitment it was going to be.

People drop for all sorts of reasons. Some of the original one-hundred-eighty couldn’t be cast due to conflicts late in the rehearsal schedule. Some had their hearts set only on one particular role and asked not to be cast in anything else. Some maybe saw the cast list and were unhappy with it. One teen I know and have worked with several times dropped not because of anything to do with the cast list or the production but because she’d been doing back-to-back-to-back shows since our production of Moana Jr. back in October and, despite getting a named role with featured solos, she’s just too exhausted to tackle something as big as Beauty and the Beast as her fourth consecutive show (her last one closed on this past Sunday, the day before our rehearsals start).

There are so many reasons that people fall away from a cast between the posting of the list and the first rehearsal, but there’s also a bittersweet, psychological component some performers can’t get past: what if you’ve always dreamed of playing a particular role, finally got your chance to audition for it, but ultimately have to watch from the ensemble as someone else lives out your dream? For some people, that’s not a hurdle they can get past.

Performers get a bad rep for being divas or egotistical, especially in local theaters. And I’m not going to pretend some people aren’t divas or egotistical. But other times, loss of interest in a production when one doesn’t get the role they wanted is simply a matter of disappointment that has to be nursed from afar. In a town as small as Kalamazoo, big, splashy musicals bring out lots of talent (and it doesn’t help that there are two colleges with notable performing arts programs located right in the heart of the city), but you might only have one chance in your entire lifetime to reach for the bucket-list role you covet. Most theaters operate on a ten-year-plus wait time between repeating shows, and some simply don’t get repeated. My first role at the Kalamazoo Civic Theater was in a production of Rags back in the 1990s, and I’ve never heard of another local theater doing it ever again. Missing out on a local community theater role really can feel like closing the door on your dreams, because you never know if you’ll get the chance again, or, if that chance comes, if you’ll still be the right fit for the role.

One actress, disappointed with the casting of Beauty and the Beast, confided in me that she couldn’t find it in herself to congratulate the person who ultimately won the role that she’d had her heart set on since the season was announced. “Does that make me a bad person?”

I don’t think it does. Maybe if that actress holds onto that grudge for ten years, it would. Maybe if she treated the person differently from here on out, being cold and snide and terrible about it? Sure. But being unable to be hyped-up and happy for someone who got the thing you wanted immediately after they got it and you lost it? To me, that’s understandable.

What I don’t understand are the people who do act shitty toward folks who get bigger parts. A few years back, I went into a first cast meeting and greeted someone I considered a theater friend. She turned away, pointedly and obviously starting a conversation with someone else to drive home the point that she was ignoring me. We’d both been called back for the role that I got, and though later she apologized for her actions and I told her I understood… I kinda don’t. It wasn’t my call, it was the director’s, and there was no need for the nastiness.

Another time, an actor who’d had the lead in the previous show was upset to be given a featured, but not lead, role in the next. He accepted it, then for several weeks either turned up to rehearsal in a terrible mood, refused to expend any effort in the rehearsal process, or just didn’t bother to show up at all. After a few no-call/no-shows, his part was recast and he went on to bad mouth that theater to anyone who would listen. He hasn’t been back and frankly… good riddance? Nobody needs that kind of attitude and negativity around. Which is one of the things I really, really like about my current theater: everybody puts on their big kid underoos and gets to work, and the people who don’t like a positive atmosphere tend to drift away.

There have been many a company meeting that I’ve attended, holding back a chest-burster of disappointment and tears because the finality of how everything shook out finally hit (being called back for, but not being cast as, Maria in The Sound of Music was all-time emotional theater low for me and I almost did quit that cast at the first company meeting). Last night wasn’t one of them, though I was pretty bummed to lose out on Le Fou, the role I received a callback for. I knew I was a longshot because, hey, AFAB and turning forty-two on the second weekend of performances, so while not getting the role stung a little bit for a couple days, I’m perfectly happy being Milkmaid in the opening number, “Belle.” I get to say a “Bonjour,” so what else can you ask for?

Plus, I gotta be honest, it was about time for me to be in the ensemble, just for fairness sake. In the past four shows, I’ve had featured roles: the above mentioned Sister Mary Patrick; Hunyak in Chicago; the Emerald City Guard in The Wizard of Oz; Mrs. Gloop in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was starting to feel a little uncomfortable and greedy on my part.

My kid gets a big time to shine in this one, as well. She’s been cast as the Sausage Curl Girl in the opener, and she’s thrilled. We’ve done several shows together and, she’s quick to point out, this is the first time she’s had more lines than I do.

The first cast meeting and all the emotions that go with it is in the bag. Now the hard work starts.

Not to complain, but I feel like a lot of us are having a few weeks in a row here where it’s like… this is something you blame on astrology. This is what people mean when they say Mercury Retrograde or Neptune is in Uranus or whatever. I don’t know a lot about astrology, and I slept through most of astronomy. But what I mean is, it just feels like time and events are intensely weird.

Does it just seem like there’s more of everything? I’m sitting here in my bed, typing this up, feeling terrible because I somehow feel like I’m not doing anything.

I don’t have any deadlines.

I don’t generally work super hard on Mondays.

I had to drive my pet rat to the crematorium this morning because I came home from a disappointing Marvel movie and found him dead, so from now on, I’m blaming Benedict Cumberbatch for the death of my pet.

But for some reason, I feel like I’m dropping the ball because I’m sitting in my bed and not at my desk.

And I know that it’s not just me. It seems like everyone is in a constant state of feeling like they might have left the oven on. That includes people who don’t usually struggle with their mental health. Even they’re feeling like they must be forgetting to do something.

I’m constantly sure I’m the only one who isn’t “back to normal” while realizing how absurd that sounds. There is no normal anymore, not even for a few seconds, because everything is in a swift state of change. Things are moving too fast and everyone feels too slow.

Maybe not everyone. I see Facebook posts from people doing their gardening or going on tropical vacations and they’re smiling and it looks exhausting. Am I supposed to be back to that kind of thing? It’s an impossible climb. I haven’t returned pop bottles this whole time and yet I buy more pop. I don’t know what to do with them. They’re just sitting in my garage. If we go to war and there’s a scrap metal drive, I will be crowned your king and your god.

So, is everyone back to normal? Am I the lazy one? Are all the other people out there talking about how they feel this exact way only feeling that way because they’re overachievers and actually everything in their lives is fine?

I had losses this week both human and animal and I don’t even have time to feel sentimental. I’m too busy feeling like I’m running behind or dropping the ball. I’m too full of other grief to add more on top of the grief I’m trying to ignore. Again, I’m not alone; a million people in my country have died from Covid, and for every one of those people there are the people who knew them and grieve them and that’s just a lot of grieving people probably dealing with their grief in unhealthy ways.

But there’s so much other stuff to worry about, stuff that’s moving fast. How can I keep up if I can’t keep up with my life on a normal slow day?

It’s not just me, right?