Guthrie Theater

The Third Woman - In Which I Feel Like I'm Marie Antoinette at Sea in a Host of Foreign Etiquette or How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Big Blue Box

I was in rehearsal last week gathering my little rehearsal props in preparation to run the scene where I come home for college for the weekend. I’ve been carrying my own bag onstage so I have things to fuss with during the scene – chapstick, cell phone etc. Jason the Assistant Stage Manager scurried over with a non-functioning cell phone. I giggled and said, “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll just use mine.” Jason pointed at the phone in my hand asked if, eventually, I would want a flip top cell phone. I responded eloquently, “Oh! Um… well… uh, sure! That’s great, ‘cause Sally and I have a ‘thing’. I mean, I don’t want to… whatever is around is fine. Sure!”

It’s in moments like this that I feel small, silly and confused about why anyone would be so accommodating of me. It reminded me of my first costume fitting at the Children’s Theater Company. One of the lovely costumers held out a garment and as I reached for it she said, “No, no. Just put your arms out.”

A person who isn’t me will put a t-shirt on my body? I can have a cell phone because I made it a part of my stage business? I can have a specific cell phone? Where will it stop? Can I start demanding things? Jewelry? Pastries? My very own Petit Trianon in the Gold Medal Park?

In this way, working at the Guthrie for the first time is also a bit like moving to NYC. It’s not just that everything you could need is in NYC, it’s that there are 20 of everything you could need in every neighborhood. It’s overwhelming to know where to fit. But little by little you identify the coffee shop, the post office and the deli that you like and stake out your own corner of the city.

Right now I’m still wandering around the Guthrie a little at sea. I get lost in the stairwells trying to find that room where the actors can gather when they’re not onstage. I run for the buzzing door to make it through before it shuts and spill coffee all over myself. When asked what I’m doing for Third I explain over and over that I’m acting in it.

However, all is not lost. I am beginning to stake out my corner of the city. The bartender in the Level Five Café that went to college with my husband, the First Hand in the Costume Shop who remembers me from CTC, the Yellow Box of the Dowling Studio Lobby… and most importantly, Rehearsal Room 2 and the couches outside of it, my fellow collaborators and the work are mine. No matter the size or scope of the theater I can always find myself at home in the work.