I am a nervous, fluttering hen that has been sitting on an egg – trying to keep it warm and nurtured for the past three months. I have staved off the wolfs and the hyenas. I have protected it from the farmer who wanted to pluck it early, call it scrambled and have breakfast. I have kept the barnyard as clean as I can – while sitting on the egg – no easy task. I have given up on my husband chicken who gets up every damn morning to spread an alarm that we are one more day closer to chicken and on day further from an egg. I have carried on my sitting while a barn full of cows and colts, tractors and ploughs, fertilizer and insecticide have polluted the air and noise of my steady watch.
I am a high school theatre director. I am in my last rehearsal. I see a crack on the egg. I have either damaged the egg and will soon find a dead chicken – or it will be a healthy chicken working its way out of the shell in just a moment. But this chicken is tired. I am not doing this egg thing for awhile.
One comment on “Cracked Egg”
I’ve never been involved in theater, but it’s clearly a lot of work.
You are not only in charge of yourself, but you’re managing many others as well. Anything can happen, and I’m sure at times, chaos takes place.
While it’s obviously nerve wracking (especially toward the later stages of development), as you know, each and every performance lends room to observe and improve.
But since you’ve been doing this a while, you’ve probably come across this many times before and have only gotten better as the years have passed. Not always easy to remember this in the moment, but it’s true.