and a month later, she emerges

Hello all you cats out there in TV-land.

So Nei-Play Year 2 has been a little time-consuming. Today I sit on the second day of our first official break and wonder how it all blew by so fast. I know even this four day rest period will be gone before I can say "Monday," and I'll be back in Martha's studio, practicing my jazz routine to "I Can't Decide" by the Scissor Sisters, and down in the auditorium, huffing through "Show Me" from My Fair Lady. For the moment, I sit in my mostly clean apartment and await the arrival of the Dad Caravan to go upstate for a whole day and a half, try to see my family and collect my thoughts.

Although I feel we're just starting to scratch the surface of character in this technique, by the time we get to Christmas, we put the Meisner relationship exercise away forever. Forever! To think that I'll be thinking of my final few activities in the coming three weeks. It's a bit frightening, though there was once a time I would've laid down and died for such an opportunity - when I was scraping the bottom of the barrel, and combing the aisles of Duane Reade for ideas. But now, working with Mr. Pinter full time - Mr. Pinter who kicks so much ass, he comes back in the DAY AFTER his cataract operation to teach class...and auctions off his hospital bracelet, gown, and tote bag. I was the lucky winner of the bracelet, which has been placed delicately in one of my tsotchke boxes.

The technique is so close to therapy, I would often worry last year what would happen if someone lost it and never came back. In my second to last scene last year (a scene that has since been removed from the allowed roster of 1st year scenes), Ms. Nasty and I would get so insane, we'd inevitably end the scene screaming bloody murder at each other. After one particularly hair-tearing rehearsal, I remember sitting on the bed in 5C, listening to Jim Brill critique me, crying...and crying...and crying. And trying to haul myself together, and listen to the critique. And barely capable of plugging up the tears, because of whatever vein Ms. Nasty (and Jim's deliberate coaching to make us both go for the jugular as we did the scene, stopped and repeated, then did the scene again) had struck. Whatever floodgates opened there were pretty difficult to ram shut again.

So combine that kind of work with any kind of drug use, outside stresses, or relationship drama, you wind up with a recipe for bad bad news. Which brings me to the first case of genuine crazy I've ever heard of at the Playhouse.

Word on the street: First-Year Argentino (who's quite cool, and I've hung with, never noticing anything particularly off-kilter) gets dumped by long-distance girlfriend. Last week, he was showing me the hologram picture of the two of them he kept in his wallet (hologram, yes, I kid you not). Now they're done. Beginning Friday, he begins a five-day coke binge that concludes in freak-out in front of main acting teacher, Gary Kingston. The Second Year acting class is then cancelled, as Pinter and Kingston stay with him until "Bellevue comes."

Pinter tells us expressly not to gossip, and I suppose this is gossiping. Nevertheless, I am more surprised that dramas of this nature do not happen more often.

Later, at Thanksgiving dinner with my mother and her benefactor, I tell this story over a plate of butternut squash ravioli. Her benefactor has just returned from Argentina, with a pair of socks and a beautiful fan for me, and lord knows what for her. He informs me:

"They like their coke down there. But the story doesn't sound surprising, judging from the national temperament. God, I love them."