Ruby

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. ~Oscar Wilde

Today is another OZ! rehearsal.

I know I haven't blogged about it a lot since it began, minus a small introductory post, posted in a fit of intense exhaustion the night of auditions

Really, I think it's because I at one point was trying to keep my personal life away from this blog. I didn't want to be the kind of person who chronicled the details of my day-by-day existence, simply because that wasn't the point behind this blog in the beginning.

But honestly, this show means a lot to me....maybe even more than any other production I've worked on thus far. That's a hard thing to say, given how many shows I've been a part of in my almost twenty-one years of life, but I think it might be true for this one.

OZ! is a bucket list item that I've finally managed to check off.

Number 43: direct my first musical. 

We open in one month from Tuesday. My 21st birthday, September 23rd, will be spent fulfilling a lifelong dream. 

It has been so incredibly hard. Much harder than I ever could have envisioned at the beginning. And I'm sure that, as this show continues to progress, I will have more and more and more and more and more moments of varying levels of emotion.

Every director has a roller-coaster that we ride from the very first day.

Yes! This is going to be amazing!

This is NEVER going to get done.

We are so far ahead!

I can't do this; it's just too hard!

I know that I have already run the gambit of these feelings more than once, and I promise that I will be doing it again in the near future. 

I have cried so many tears to my Love in frustration over this show.

I have hosted small one-person dance parties in my kitchen in the utter elation of success. 

It's what happens in theatre. 

It's a dream come true.

And so, as the weeks pass and rehearsals come heavy and fast, I will continue to click my ruby-clad heels together and whisper

there's no place like home.