3/28/10 – 3/29/10 - The Gateway to the South and More Actor Musings…Louisville, KY

Well, here we are blog readers…our final long van drive. =) We have two full and rainy days of driving ahead of us before we arrive in Memphis. Since R.J. has left the tour, we have one less person in the van, so we are able to sit two to a row and be comfortable. Throughout the entire tour, we typically have had to transport nine people in the van, which meant that two people sat up front in the driver and passenger seats, while the remaining seven of us battled it out for the three rows of seating in the back. With seven people and only three rows, three of us would inevitably be squished into one row with the other four evenly coupled in the other two rows. Getting premium seating in the van became a game of “the early bird gets the worm”, with actors arriving early to van call in order to reserve a spot in one of the coveted two-person rows. We were all happy to be able to spread ourselves out a bit for our final long-distance van drive.



After one day of driving, we made a brief stopover in Louisville, KY, the largest city in Kentucky. Named for King Louis XVI of France, who aided the Americans during the Revolutionary War, Louisville is located in north central Kentucky, on the Ohio River. It is called “The Gateway to the South” and is often referred to as the northernmost Southern city or southernmost Northern city. This internal shipping port was one of the largest slave trading cities in the U.S. With its close proximity to the free state of Indiana to the North, Louisville was a major stop on the Underground Railroad and was often a point of escape for slaves to the North. Louisville is most well known for being the home of the Kentucky Derby (the 1st race of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing), the supplier of one-third of all bourbon whiskey, and the site of the Humana Festival of New American Plays (a six-week long, internationally acclaimed new play festival at the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville). Of course, as with most of our prior stops, we were not able to do any sightseeing in Louisville, but it was still fun to be able to research this location for my blog.



I have been doing some weighty contemplation about my acting performance and career during our long drives. At this point in the tour, I am so tired that I feel like my performance has degenerated. As much as I try to fight it, I am finding myself “unplugging” during the show and operating on automaton mode because I simply do not have any energy to create a brilliant performance. I am also at another crossroads, constantly wondering and worrying what project is next for me, yet so physically and mentally exhausted and uninspired to come up with any rational solutions. It is amazing to me how exhaustion and lack of rest can skew one’s perspective on so many things and cloud one’s vision! I am hopeful that some well-deserved rest and decompression after the tour will help to allay these worries and concerns.

Next stop – the Orpheum in Memphis, TN. Until the next adventure…

Ciao!
XOXO-
Janine