Mark and I left the girls with a friend on Friday night and went to go see
The Frankenstein Project at
Sledge. I didn’t expect it to feel so good to be in my old theatre again and thought the old haunted funeral chapel would revel to me my own ghosts from my life before kids. We stood outside waiting for the doors to open while listening to a man very confidently tell his date about the history of the theatre. He got it all wrong and I couldn’t help but giggle into my sleeve. Inside we found seats and I excused myself from Mark, Nate and Sandy to go use the restroom. Should I use the haunted one or the one I’d likely get locked into? I took my chances with the haunted. In the lobby I ran into the director and her three-month-old daughter and we stood gabbing about babies, catching up since we so rarely see each other. She’s one of the few women I know who can direct a show she wrote while nursing a baby in rehearsals. The acting was stellar, the directing clean and imaginative, the work… it made me nostalgic for that life of creation. A Sledgehammer show isn’t designed to make you like it, rather to keep you thinking for days. Liking it is just a bonus.
Our friend Jo, who was watching the girls, had encouraged us to go out after and so we all went to enjoy cake and hot mulled cider at a local shop, laughing and talking and just enjoying our friends. We got home just before midnight to two sleeping children and a report of only about 20 minutes of screaming from the tiny one.
We’ll only get one more chance to see a performance in that space. The
building is being torn down at the end of the year, making way for condos; a crumble of debris where a chapter of my life once stood. The theatre will go back to its roots as a site-specific troupe. I am excited for what they will produce, even in my sorrow for a theatre space filled with memories where several companies were born and even Whoopi Goldberg got her start. Sometimes “progress” sucks.
From
Richard III 
From
The Devil’s River 
