Nelson V-Blog: The Gorilla Has Left The Building

One of the best things about traveling half way across the world and returning is that you literally miss at least 2 days of your normal life being strapped to a seat at 36,000 feet in the air. I used the time to sleep, reflect, and reaffirm my commitment to being happy. Cuz, trust me, I was hatin' for a while.

I got a call on Thursday January 4th from my boss asking me what I was doing the following week. I had classes, rehearsals, and QT needing to be done with the loved ones at home. OK. Scratch all of those items out. I needed to go to India to court a potential partner with my day job's products. Uhm, did I happen to mention that I had classes, rehearsals, and QT needing to be done with the loved ones at home? It turned out that the one guy who was completely qualified for the task was on vacation through January 15th...IN INDIA! However, no one could get a hold of him. I asked, "Why would I create this upon myself?" So, I spent the next two days:

1. Trying to get a hold of this guy in India to take my place
2. Calling up/emailing my directors for my shows letting them know about the trip, apologizing like hell, and hoping to gawd they allow me continue in certain productions.
3. Running around two to get a visa to allow me to enter the country. It only took me 4 trips to complete the process. I should've seen this as a sign of things to come in India because everything is 4 times harder to do there
4. Brushing up on my improv/technical skills to be able to present these products to aforementioned partners.
5. Spending as much time with my family before I left.

I never did get a hold of the guy in India before I left (of course, I got a strange feeling that dude would probably call the second my plane took off from the airport just to spite me ). I had to let my director know what was going on with the trip and wait to see what happened. A couple of hours later I find out they had made the decision to move on without me on the Mary Kay LeTourneau Story:A Karoake Musical and recast my parts. I completely, totally understood and agreed with the decision as I was going to miss out on a total of 6 rehearsals of which 2 were tech rehearsals which would've really put the rest of the cast in a precarious situation. So, I took the news in as best I could (I didn't cry but I was definitely upset at the India situation) and asked the director if I could go ahead and email the cast with my apologies. I got home later that night and crafted my email and sent it to the cast. I got a few replies from folks with positive responses and a lot of love thrown my way (thank you guys!). So, as painful as it was to send it, I did feel a little bit better that people understood.

I had a killer performance at Sketchfest with Salsation Theatre Company that Friday, so, that helped me feel a little better. Some of my castmates from my musical improv group Recapitulation showed up and showed a brother some love. Afterwards, we all went out to eat at Joey's Brickhouse across the street and talked about stuff like our performances, lives, and the occasional Michael Richard's rant We all had plans to audition for the Second City Musical Improv House Ensemble. I urged and supported those auditioning cuz I truley believe they all could make it all the while knowing that I may not even get back in time for me to audition myself . Another thing impacted by this dang trip. I also ended up missing my first days of class for both Musical Improv and Conservatory as well as the first day of rehearsal for the SCTC Level 5 Writing Shows.

So, my theatre stream has been rebooted a bit for 2007. I am looking at this in a positive way. There has got to be a reason why this trip came into existence and impacted my life so greatly. There's something to learn and I intend to allow it to sink into my life and cherish the experience. Otherwise, I'd be hatin' a lot at this point.

More to come on the actual trip...