Epic like The Fellowship of the Bard, The Two Bards, The Return of the Bard

Sometimes in the stillness between thoughts, I am overcome with bitter sadness. It's heavy and ugly and mean. It suffocates the light right out of me. Between breath and heartbeat, I am enshrouded in impossible melancholy.

And then it's gone.

The earth turns, a breeze picks up, and I am left with traces of this great evil, shadowy fingerprints around my heart, all over my mind.

I think I realized today, in the wake of darkness, what I had in Romeo and Juliet. Its preciousness shone clearly, and I wept "for such a feeling loss."

I have always wanted to be a part of something wonderful, something immense, something immortal. I think Romeo and Juliet was my chance-- the lives that were shaped and the souls that poured in and the sunset behind us each night and the friendships forged and the slow change in the seasons and the hundreds of people whose paths crossed with ours. There won't be anything like it for a long time, if ever again.

I should have savored every second of it.

But here I am, suddenly alone in my room, struggling against residual despair and longing to be back among such glorious people, creating something worth remembering.

We held on to it, back when we could feel the end looming over us. The depth of the love and the warmth of that party at Anne's house staved off the encroaching darkness for a little while. We were a family for a few perfect hours.

I really wish we had taken a cast photo.

Everyone is asking me what my next project is, what I'm doing now, or when they can come see my next show. The nature of theatre is much more life-like than film; a show grows and progresses, then fades and essentially dies. By the natural progression of things, I must let this project die and move on.

I think I will always be haunted by Romeo and Juliet, much as one never forgets the potency of a first true love. Years from now, when I happen upon the script in a move, when I go to my daughter's high school production, or receive an unexpected phone call from Kat or Benji or Meg, I will feel the amber glow of this summer chase away the shadows.

I will smile sadly.

And I will be thankful then, as I am now, to have been right in the thick of something wonderful, something immense, something immortal.

USIP RandJ - picture slideshow

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Recorded 9/13/10