It’s been quite a ride over the past two weeks! Today we had our second (and last) plainclothes run, before sitzprobe tomorrow (that’s German for “sitting rehearsal” and refers to the sing-through with the band) and tech starting Tuesday.

Here I am lounging between scenes with Fred Ross, who plays Joe Kennedy in Act 1 and the infamous Jerry from the Grey Gardens documentaries in Act 2.

On Labor Day we had a little cast party and watched both Grey Gardens and The Beales of Grey Gardens (you can watch the whole thing online through IMDb/Hulu here) back-to-back. It was surprisingly hard for me to watch them this time around — with a whole group of people, laughing at the funny things they say and the crazy outfits Little Edie wears. Which is not to say that I haven’t had the same reaction before… but this time in a way it started to feel like the coliseum, watching an abusive relationship and calling it entertainment. The original reality television. I found myself wanting to be Edie’s champion, not because she’s a freak, but because she’s a human being. And she’s doing the best she can, like the rest of us.

There’s a part in the second documentary in which Edie is reading her Zolar astrology book and she gets off on a tangent while reading about Scorpios:

“If the birthday is between November 1st and November 11th, it will be necessary to handle the Scorpion pride with care.” You see, THAT’S what is so often forgotten. PRIDE. They don’t – nobody takes that into account. They think you don’t have it, or something. You know, people are very, very sensitive. No one takes into account how sensitive a person really IS. I don’t mean just a Scorpio or a Libra. Everybody is terribly sensitive. And other people don’t understand how sensitive a human being IS! They don’t understand it. So they run roughshod over EVERYBODY.

She goes on to read (Edie was a Scorpio, and so am I): “‘Their greatest battles will be with themselves.’ Correct.”

It’s easy to distance ourselves, watching the film, and get caught up in Edie’s eccentricities… her headscarves and totally unique dialect and the fact that she reads books with a magnifying glass and the scale with binoculars. But it doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to feel Edie’s vulnerability and wounded heart, to imagine her being snubbed by former friends from the Maidstone Club (as she mentions in the films), to be able to identify with her as another person learning her own lessons, on her own path.

Here’s beautiful Edie circa 1940, around the time when the imagined Act 1 of our show takes place.

To be honest, putting up this show has been rather an easier process for me than ever before. The lines have assimilated themselves without much effort; the music gotten into my ear and into my voice (except for maybe that one crazy B flat in Act 2). Which is, in large part, a testament to the writing. With so much of the dialogue coming straight out of the documentaries and the songs leaping off the page as perfectly singable monologues, it’s hard not to just get on the train and ride it. And working with a stellar cast and creative team doesn’t hurt either.

So the long and short of it is, I’m still pinching myself that I’m here, this show, this role, this time & place. And I’m excited for this next week and of course looking forward to getting in front of an audience and sharing these women’s stories with more of the world. They break my heart every time, but that’s all a part of life.