Was ever man so beaten? Was ever man so ray'd? Was ever man so weary?

This post's title is from Taming of the Shrew.  I found it by using this amazing online Shakespeare resource, which includes a searchable concordance of all the Bard's works.  I was looking for the word "weary".  Which is what I am.

We must be doing something right, because people keep... helping us.  Let me explain.  This week marked the point where we going to start putting everything together - lines, fights, as much as we could.  Only trouble is, we didn't have a good space to do it.  It's all well and good to mark your blocking and fights in your living room, but when you have to go all out on five or six sword fights, a 6 x 10 space with low ceilings just ain't gonna cut it.  And that goes double with two overstimulated dogs running around your ankles.  So we started looking around for a space.  When we were getting ready for the video shoot we rented the Parish Hall at CPT, but some other theater group has rented virtually every available space at CPT for this entire week.  We were feeling kind of lost.  Then we had the brilliant idea to contact the Beck Center and ask for space.  (For you non-Clevelanders, the Beck Center is a big theater organization in Lakewood, a small but densely populated city just west of Cleveland.)  Anyway, the Beck, which is a partner for CPT, graciously offered us the use of their Studio Theater for this week.  Awesome!

Then we started asking around for folding gym mats.  We wanted to do some tumbling and falling in the show and we not looking forward to doing it on hard floors.  Two different people suggested that we contact the theater department at CSU, which we did, and on Monday afternoon I had two large folding mats wedged into my car, cutting off all visibility out the rear and passenger windows.  It was also snowing like a mother.  Made for some white-knuckle driving, I can tell you that.

And on top of all that, Ali has just been fantastic.  She's been giving us great notes, and she's been so helpful with putting the show together.  Yesterday she went out and bought stuff to make props, and at last night's rehearsal we ended up working solely on fights because we still had a couple things left to finalize.  She stayed and gave us some good perspective on what we were doing.  And then tonight, when Kelly and I got home from work, I said that I was feeling particularly stressed out and on a short fuse, and Kelly suggested that we cancel for tonight.  So I called Ali, and she agreed.  She said the show looks great, but that Kelly and I look very tired, and we should take it easy for a night.  Hence, the title of this post.

If it doesn't snow horribly tomorrow, we'll be going back to the Beck Center for one more rehearsal, and then it's hammering away at the multimedia for the rest of the weekend, and then we tech on Monday.  We go, we go, see how we go!  Swift as arrow from Tartar's bow!