Life post-Usher

Usher was a smashing success. The show went off without a hitch, and I think we're all proud of what we presented. There's something really nice about doing smaller-scale projects. We were able to go much deeper than what's usually possible in the typical six week rehearsal block. Usually you have many more moving parts, involving more complicated set changes, the addition of a chorus, many more roles, etc. In Usher we had three main roles and two smaller ones, which just through pure arithmetic meant each person had more time to dig deeper throughout rehearsals.

And it paid off. I've explained to my colleagues how I so rarely feel I can stop worrying about what comes next in a show. In this one, it's just one moment flows into the next, and I'm staying present the whole time. The intensity of the staging requires it. There's something to be said for doing something so psychologically intense. It's actually freeing, in a weird way. Freeing from my own inner thoughts and demons, which we all have. (Sometimes on stage I've found myself thinking about what I'm going to eat after the  show, or what things I need to get done.)

After the premiere, I've enjoyed a little bit of downtime. But not much. Because this coming week it's back to Humanoid, a revival (Wiederaufnahme) from last season by Leonard Evers. It's kind of an opera version of the movie Her, where Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with his AI voice assistant. In the opera, my character Jonas has created his own pet robots, including one as a recreation of his dead girlfriend. Weird stuff.