Kind of joyful. Matinees.

This blog is about matinees.

Not like at the movies when you get a discount, but the 2:30 PM performances when, well, sometimes you get a discount.

Matinees are challenging for a variety of reasons. Especially if you're not a morning person. And, if you've done an 8PM show the night before, then you're definitely not a morning person. It's like going into the office early, that feeling of "Wasn't I just here? Did I really go home and sleep?" Only you can't hide in your coffee cup, or surf Facebook for an hour hoping your boss won't swing by your cubicle. It's not like at the pre-school, where you have to be alert fairly early in the morning, but at least you can distract the kids with a new toy and hope you won't have to make a bathroom-run anytime soon. Nope. You've gotta rev it up, and energize an entire audience of people who also might not be morning people. Or early afternoon people. Answering to fifty-plus people on a Sunday afternoon is a little bit like facing an oncoming cement-truck. It's slow. You might be able to get out of the way. But if you don't, it's going to be really heavy, and it's going to hurt.

We walk into the dressing-room kind of hunched over, our eyes at half-mast. There's a lot of mumbling. It's hard to be polite. But we have techniques: I make sure I have my coffee, and I pour a packet of Emergen-C into my bottled water. Also, yoga once I get to the theatre. And it helps when the stage manager pumps Jennifer Hudson over the speakers.

And then it's the opening number: the lights dim to a midnight blue and I'm kneeling and facing upstage, my friends open their mouths and I'm hit by a wall of gorgeous sound and then I think, "How many people are lucky enough to be surrounded by beautiful music and lights and pretty colors and laughter on a Sunday afternoon?" Not the majority. Matinees can be joyful things. I felt lucky today, and then I forgot about pleasing the audience and I played, merely hoping that the audience felt lucky too.