Whenever my very good friend Wild Pirate Jenny comes to town, disastrous things happen. Freak ice blizzards. Debilitating heat waves. Pools breaking. When she goes to New York, it's worse: once she took out the power grid for the whole Eastern Seaboard.
This time around, she came to Portland and my computer died, the Metamorphoses pool broke and I lost my job (through entirely understandable and amicable circumstances, but still highly inconvenient for me). I made the mistake of playing two games of pool with her and I ended up having to wear a skirt all day Thursday.
Just prior to a highly emotional cast meeting (in which we were asked to accept the absence of the water), a tech from the second theatre space in the building came running down to get me. Upstairs, a Japanese theatre company was rehearsing another show, and one of their castmembers had dislocated her shoulder. As the (uncertified) EMT in the building, I rushed upstairs to find a circle of Japanese women sitting around a weeping young woman, with her shoulder looking funny, the way dislocated shoulders do. They were a bit startled by my Bacchus tiger-print skirt, but once I explained who I was they seemed to calm down a bit, more or less.
I made sure she hadn't broken anything, doing my best to explain myself through three translators. I was checking her wrist and elbow, in case there was anything else going on in those joints, when suddenly she started laughing and weeping all at once. All around us, the circle of sad Japanese women erupted in joyous applause. The dour, fierce-looking choreographers and technicians started smiling and nodding. Utterly lost, I turned to the tech who'd run down to find me, and he was just as stumped as I. Apparently, her shoulder had just popped back into place of its own accord, and now everyone thinks I'm a faith healer. She clung to me with her head in my lap while I tried to explain that she should put some ice on her shoulder. Mystified, I made my way back downstairs to the tense, emotional cast meeting, and the rest of this surreal week.
Before she could do further damage, Wild Pirate Jenny left for Denver yesterday morning, and we opened the show with those same acres of silk we've been rehearsing with. Fodder enough for another post later.
In spite of all, I am reveling in these swelling currents, riding the crest of these endless waves. More soon.
best,
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