Balancing Act

If you've been reading in the past week, you know that my husband and I have just upended our family for the summer and taken acting jobs at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. It's a funny thing to leave your normal routine for the strange and wonderful undertaking of making theater.

Life has completely shifted in the past week. At home in Dallas I was packing lunches, tending my garden, attending PTA meetings, painting in my studio, completing art commissions and writing home tour articles for Houzz in the margins. Now in Cedar City I'm attending character meetings with my directors, sitting for wig fittings, memorizing lines and blocking, researching back story, learning new dialects, singing at and above my range and understudying multiple roles in addition to my own.

Most of the other actors are here for the summer alone. They've left their girlfriends and houses and husbands and home lives behind to immerse themselves in this world. I'm slightly jealous. The time is their own and they can do with it as they please. Their's is a more streamlined process. All the while, my children are with me, at my feet, in my lap, in my arms, wanting to read and play and cuddle and cry and eat and sleep and be mothered. I certainly don't wish to be separated from them. In fact, they bring their own special light to this process. But it's clear now that I must be patient with myself. My lines and lyrics might come a bit slower, my voice might be less warm, my mind a bit more scattered, my body a bit rounder, my energy a bit softer. But I'm confident that while my acting process has become a little more fluid than I'd like, my work as story teller will be solid and thoughtful and beautifully crafted. I just might need a little more coffee than my fellow actors.

All photos from Instagram. Follow along!