I got my first personal Christmas card yesterday. From Tank at Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre of all places! Tank is sort of a cling-on who appeared to make coffee and hot chocolate for the actors backstage one year and became a fixture. The SM's of years past kept warning me "Tank is here for fun, he is not here to help us." but when I was getting there at 3 or 4 in the afternoon to start setting props for an 8:00 curtain, there were several times when Tank would walk out of his concessions tent, sigh and say "Okay, where do you need this carried? Where does this go?" Tank is excellent people.

Neither Mark or I could sleep last night. He's still feeling pretty sick. We ended up getting up around 4 and sitting around talking about the pros and cons of auditioning for Sweeny Todd since it looks like it will be a full production of it (We really couldn't think of any pros) and the whole ATY kind of mentality that it's wonderful to take a tiny, tiny part just to be a part of and help a production. That's one of the major reasons I crossed over into Stage Management - I knew I could get small parts at ATY and bigger ones at Character Workshop and probably be very happy as a good actor, or I could be a great stage manager.

At the same time, though, Cyrano's sometimes just wears me out. I know I have the whole "I'll do it" mentality, but sometimes I get so tired of being the one who thinks "I know we have pictures tonight and Ollie is late, but Elle is about to die on us, can we please do her pictures first" or "Lea's dad's here, and since Matt labled the board so clearly anyone can run it, can we please send them off to dinner and do the lights ourselves?" only to have Sandy say, to my face, "I'm the Producer and he's the Artistic Director and we don't like underlings taking over and doing things." That was about something else, but the feeling is stil there. Sometimes even I get tired of being Mighty Mouse all the time.