What Dreams I Can Do Without

Slight insomnia again last night. I stayed up WAY too late on the computer, and when I got into bed I read a little bit to ease me out of the world of fighting computer monsters and into sleep. I was rewarded for my late bedtime with an awful anxiety dream.

I was back in college and apparently had learned to sing as I had taken the lead role in The Fantasticks. My former theatre professor was still the director at the theatre, but I believe the building we were in was the Classic Center in Athens, GA. I’m sure that it was in Athens. Anyway…in typical anxiety dream fashion I had not learned any of my lines and had been away at home for a week, presumably for spring break. My mother was with me coming back to school, and I remember saying to her that she needed to go into the theatre with me when I told the director I was back because if my mother was there the director couldn’t possibly get THAT mad at me.

Somehow Mom agreed and we walked toward the theatre. I saw others that I knew were in the cast going in dressed in costumes that, in my waking mind, were wrong for that play…not to mention the fact that there were too many of them…and I chatted with one guy as we were headed in the door. He wanted to know why I was there, because since I’d been skipping rehearsals I’d been demoted to understudy. I was shocked and said I’d been gone all week, had they had rehearsals? He just shook his head and went inside.

After that the dream was just flashes of being onstage, being REAMED for not knowing my lines, running about backstage, etc. The interesting and not-so-horrifying thing about the backstage part is that I could SEE the backstage area of the Maryville College theatre…I could smell it…that was, fortunately, the most realistic part of my dream. But at the same time, it would change to a backstage I didn’t recognize, and that would suddenly horrify me that not only was I unprepared for my role…I didn’t know where I was.

Wonder if I’m worried about Alabama?