Ah The Work, The Beautiful Work!

We Night Lighters have been busy lately. Suzanne moved to Knoxville (where she was recently accepted to their graduate program - whoo!) Bonnie has school, a new job, and a production of Elephant Man she's working on, and I believe Andrew is busy putting together another brilliant lighting design for True West. As for myself, I'm wrapping up R and G, and hard at work on Midsummer's Night Dream at Richmond Shakes. Needless to say, free time is a luxury that we are unable to indulge in right now. Which is a little nerve racking, because if we can barely find time to eat dinner, how are we going to keep this company afloat? How are we going to keep ourselves sane?

Yet, somehow, the work itself is what keeps us on our feet. I'm fortunate enough to be rehearsing with a very talented cast right now, and every day at rehearsal I want to push myself further and further just to keep pace with those around me. And then, I get home from rehearsal, and all I want to do is work on my script! I actually feel bad that I'm only pushing myself to mild exasperation. I could be giving more, doing more, getting further along in my process faster! What sort of super drug is this work? Why are the three cups of coffee I drink before going into work every morning not providing anywhere near the energy that this is?

The answer is simple, of course. Because I'm invested in this work with my whole body and soul. And because of that, I realize that any fears that I have for this company are unfounded. This is the work that drives us through the day, that energizes us past the normal levels of fatigue. Night Light Collective is not only interesting theatre work to us, it's super theatre, because of how much we have invested in this. And with any investment, we can only hope that we will be able to get more out of it than we put in. And that might just make all the exhaustion worth it.

- Kerry