Bar Harbor, Day #1

The sink in my bathroom is consistent in its cuteness with the rest of my room at the Villager. I freaking love this place!
The sink in my bathroom is consistent in its cuteness with the rest of my room at the Villager. I freaking love this place!

Front door of the Portland Stage company, where I will not be working any time soon.So here I am in Bar Harbor. The audition in Portland turned out to be for non-paying ensemble roles only, a fact the company manager somehow neglected to mention when she called to offer me the slot over a month ago. A disappointment, to be sure, and good reason not to take investment advice from the company manager, but I did get to show two solid monologues to the artistic director, who I hope took note of how cheerfully I accepted her employee’s (how shall I put this?) abject failure to communicate. And general auditions do count for something, I suppose, even if they end without a single question about availability or a single request for further demonstrations of talent. C’est la guerre.

The Civil War monument in Portland has Union on one side and CSA on the otherMy new best friend is the Garmin Nuvi 205. Mapless, I’ve driven over 1,200 miles so far, which journey has included two detours around road construction (just tap the “Detour” button!) and one trip into a metropolitan area at night for dinner. I even let it guide me to Acadia National Park from my extremely cute room at the Villager Motel.

As per my long-laid plans, I had blueberry pancakes this morning at Two Cats and then read science fiction on a rock overlooking the Atlantic at Otter Cove. All very nice. And the weather is lovely, I might add. Upon my return to the motel, however, I made the BIG mistake of incorporating several production calendars into my marketing schedule, thinking I’d put a few things on the near-term “to do” list and then maybe go for a walk. Instead, I nearly packed up and drove home.

Without going into unnecessary detail, I’ll leave it at this: Centre Stage is mounting one production per month for the next four months. (Translation: Write, shoot, design, proof, post and track posters, playbills, rack cards, ads, e-blasts, billboards, banners, press kits, site pages …) Excuse me, but what the fuck am I doing in Bar Harbor? I’m marketing three or four shows at any given moment and servicing freelance clients, one of which is gearing up for its annual convention. Have I lost my (please excuse me again … I’m really off the leash here) fucking mind? Rather than make plans for an early morning departure, however, I took a shower and watched a movie on TV. And now I’m blogging. Not sure what I’ll do tomorrow. Maybe I’ll curl up in a fetal position on the bathroom floor and cry. Or maybe I’ll break camp. Or maybe I’ll drive back out to Otter Cove and read again.

I intended by today to have written about the two quirky sisters who run the Villager … and the legions of homeless people wandering the streets of Portland … and how the air here sometimes smells like Christmas trees. But now … I’m just numb.