Dan Posluns

Well, Rocky came to its bittersweet conclusion this past weekend. I had somehow talked myself into the responsibility of making gifts for everyone who had been helping out on the show, and this proved to be a fairly monumental task, as there were no less than 17 people helping out at every single performance, plus five others we wanted to suitably honour: the director, producer, stage manager, music director and costumer. My initial plan called for a cast photo to be taken, which would be turned into photo-greeting-cards that we could sign and distribute to everyone. I was then going to find five inexpensive collage-frames for the others and load them up with photos of the show.

I ordered the greeting cards online and they arrived on Wednesday, but were printed at about a quarter of the resolution of the original file I sent in and looked horrible, so without sufficient time to place another order I wound up spending an evening designing them myself, going to Kinko’s and getting them printed and cut there. Meanwhile I was unable to find suitable collage frames in the budget I’d requested from the cast, so at one person’s suggestion I undertook the task of making the collages myself and fitting them into generic 16×20 inch frames, which was of course a much larger project than I’d originally signed on for or imagined.

In addition to these, in a stroke of luck/genius I’d come across mad scientist alphabet blocks which seemed like a perfect cast gift, but in order to give everyone blocks with meaningful letters on them I would have to order several sets. In a quick correspondence with the business, however, I found out that not only for a small price increase per block I could select individual blocks, but for a slightly greater increase they would let me pick all six sides for each block, which meant I could custom-tailor a block for each cast member. So for a smaller price than ordering multiple sets I was able to get each cast member their own customized mad scientist alphabet block with letters that I found meaningful to them. Sweet.

On top of this, I wanted to give the cast members a framed cast photo, so I had to get that taken care of as well. So last week was pretty much spent embroiled in getting all that together, and my condo looks like an arts-and-crafts tornado ran through it as a result.

Emotions ran pretty high for closing weekend. All three shows had sold out early in the week, so we knew we’d have good audiences. It was a long run and a good run and of course the only alternative to ending it while still wanting to do more would be to end it once we were sick of it, so there’s no option but to grieve and move on. My only frustration was that after many months of pristine health that was nothing short of miraculous I finally succumbed to a cold on our closing weekend, which of course had to be when they decided to make a video recording of the show. Boo. Fortunately the cold hasn’t affected my throat much, but it hit my lung capacity pretty badly, which wreaked havoc on my solos. The various meds I put myself on also impacted my acting in general, I think. Oh well.

I’ve added some more photos of the production to my gallery, including a whole slew that were taken when we went to see the movie version at the Admiral Theatre, and a couple of the cast with our most famous guest narrator, United States Congressman Jim McDermott:

Some newspaper came and snapped photos of the event as well, but I haven’t heard anything yet about the article.

As sad as I am to see Rocky pass on from my living world and into my life’s history, I finally made it back to an ensemble workshop at Unexpected yesterday and was startled at how much I missed my life there and doing improv. As much as I love doing scripted work, there is a naked honesty that improv provides that other forms of theatre cannot, and the people over there are so excellent that it pains me retroactively to have been removed from them for so long.

I suffered from the usual I’ve-been-away-I-sure-hope-I-remember-how-to-do-this syndrome, but I managed a couple of really decent scenes (and one spectacularly terrible one, but that’s how the improv cookie crumbles) and once I got into it and the feeling of it started flooding back to me, I was almost shaking from how much I missed doing it. I really look forward to sinking my teeth back in over there.

Dan.

The day of atonement is about the only article of my professed faith that I deliberately observe, even when so far from my family. I’m not sure why… I suppose it’s out of some tribute to my heritage, or perhaps the economy of the situation is just too good to pass up… one day of fasting clearing you for an entire year of sin is a better deal than our creator doles out to most religions, so I may as well make the most of it.

It is entirely unrelated that this has been a bad week for my own transgressions, and they have been weighing heavily on me. I won’t go into details, as I never do so here, but I can use this marker as a reminder of when it all happened and how badly I felt.

Hopefully God - or whomever - will take care of the rest.

Dan.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been feeling somewhat worthless and crappy. Not because of big, sweeping things, but rather little niggling things, none of which individually amounts to much or which I feel compelled to write about in this blog, where I keep trying to accentuate the positive as the song goes. I need more sleep. I’m glad I’m busy most nights… I’d rather be busy than bored. But lately I’ve been questioning if I’m getting as much out of staying busy as the effort I pour into it, and if a happy medium exists it continues to elude me.

I went to traffic court and had the more expensive count of my ticket dismissed “in the interests of justice” (that was cool to hear). The other count was reduced to $99. I think I may have misstepped in that I could have had that $99 fine “deferred” and kept off my record entirely if I managed to avoid another moving violation for a year. But they only let you do that every seven years, apparently, and they don’t let you weigh the option of deferring against whatever leniency the judge might show you… you have to choose and then present your case, not the other way around.

Being in court was a little intimidating, although I learned that you apparently don’t have to dress up nearly as nice as I did for traffic court. Or even be very coherent. Still, there’s something about the formality of all of it, surrounded by a couple dozen of your peers, being asked to give your “excuse”… it’s a bit like being called to the front of the class when you secretly only watched the movie and never read the book you’re supposed to be reporting on. (Tess of the D’Urbervilles, 10th grade, I believe I got the highest mark out of anyone who was assigned that book.)

I went to the farmer’s market that’s kittycorner to me and bought some more Rainier cherries, plums and peaches. The cherries we get out here are excellent, but I’ve had some difficulty coming to terms with the reality that the peaches simply won’t ever be as good as the ones I could get in Ontario or New York… they’re either artificially ripened on their way from California or if they’re local they’re usually undersized and covered in bruises and other defects. Plums aren’t my favourite fruit, but at least they’re usually pretty reliable… I am annoyed by how deceptive fruit can be, and how the quality of its flesh so rarely speaks to what lies beneath. That is, of course, true of so many things… I guess that’s what makes them so ripe for metaphor. (Pun unintended, but still clever.)

Dan.