[44] TOURNELLE DU SOLEIL • VENUE, BROOKLYN • MAY 31, MORNING (Patreon)

I wake before my alarm.

Pain.

My left knee has resumed functioning like a normal knee. Right hip is seized up completely.

Even a lunge is challenging. How am I going to get through the day?

I leave the hotel early, waving at the others enjoying their morning coffees in the lobby from a distance and gritting my teeth until I’m past the wide front windows so that I can hobble and limp the rest of the way to the venue.

First up is makeup. At least I’ll get to sit in the chair for an hour. Maybe it just needs to warm up. Wake up. Something. Please, be something like that.

I pop a couple Advil, anxiety and pragmatism singing a duet in my head as I do.

Not supposed to perform with painkillers on board.

Desperate times.

Just don’t make it a habit.

What if this is how those habits get made, though?

It’s Advil, not Oxy.

Still.

I sit calmly in the makeup chair. Smile. Sip my water. Enjoy the morning chatter. Watch my face transform slowly into a holographic, smoothed, perfected replica of its original canvas. Set it with an avalanche of powder.

It’s 11am before I know it.

I’m whisked upstairs to practice the costume quick changes with Mindy, Antoine, Genevieve, and the riggers. I think the Advil is doing something, but I don’t trust my right leg to not shut off without notice. I hold onto the door frames, to shoulders, to the edge of an old wardrobe in the small anteroom adjacent to the backstage area. It’s a lot, and it’s fast–and then it’s time to break for lunch. Mercifully, it’s been brought to the venue for us today. No need for me to hobble to a restaurant around the corner.

At 2:30pm, Sam and I get to rehearse with the silk fabric and the fan: the opening image that Matthew is drilling down on as needing to be perfect, perfect, perfect.

I want it to be perfect. Sam wants it to be perfect. Matthew needs it to be perfect. The fabric has different ideas. It does something different almost every time we try it.

Sam is stressed. “I wish we’d been able to practice with this more in Montréal.”

Ron is standing nearby, helping retrieve the fabric each time we blow it high into the air. “It’s not our fault at this point if it’s not perfect,” he says practically.

He’s right. But I’m still feeling the pressure.

A slow cue-to-cue follows. There’s so many details. So many things that haven’t been addressed yet. That’s why we’re doing this run-through, I remind myself. Now is the time to iron these things out.

We break for a quick bite and then we’re all getting ready for the full run-through. I barely eat. Start my contortion warm-up well ahead of the rest of the cast. Trying to gently address each and every muscle group and nerve I can think of around my unpredictable hip and painful knee. Trying to buy myself some slim shred of insurance for the rehearsal.

We’re all in costume thirty minutes before the show. Up the stairs, staying warm in the first costume, trying to run through all my stage cues in my head.

Five minutes out.

I’m stressed.

We haven’t practiced the lift that happens in the first sequence yet. I’m not a flyer. God help me.

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Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil arrives tomorrow at 7am EST / 1pm CEST!

Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess