seasons change.

Today is June 21st. It is the official start of the summer season this year. The thermometer is expected to gauge at least 100 degrees. I expect this to be in the shade, given the all too frequent inaccuracy of meteorologists.

After exhausting my options I have decided on a stage manager for my show. This is possibly the most important position on a show, and the selection of one should not be taken lightly. For the past several weeks, I have been on the hunt for anyone to work on the show at all, which has in itself been an uphill battle.

The stage manager role takes an extra level of importance in my mind. Given the variety of duties and expectations demanded by a production, the stage manager needs to be someone with whom the director can trust. I am scheduled to meet with her today to grab some coffee and talk over some more specific details about the show. With the first fully committed member of the team on-board, I realize the show is now underway, inching toward opening night. Given the way I have found my life flowing with the currents of life as it passes, it doesn't surprise me in the least that production begins on the first day of summer and will cease when our show opens on the first day of autumn.

It has become customary for a number of the shows at my theater to film one or two performances to keep for prosperity's sake, as well as the cast and crew. Unfortunately one of the longest running jokes seems to be the unlikely event that the tapes would ever become DVD due to some creative flakiness of one or two folks who will go unmentioned. When I directed my first show there I vowed to break that cycle, however, against my better ability I have still been unable to find a way to get those DVDs knocked out by those with proper equipment. I am sure there's a curse over the process.

I have gotten close on my most recent show. I was scheduled to meet today with the production guy who was helping me out with one edit. Through details too boring to share I know that this will be an incomplete copy, but it's a version none the less. I figured we would add the missing footage and call it a day. It would appear that as I rev up the new show, there will be very little looking back, since I have just learned that his hard drive crashed YESTERDAY. It's what it is.

Harnessing live theater is like that. Those shaky VHS copies of silly school performances friend's parents used to film never really captured it. Live performance is special. It has its moment and then it's gone. It echoes life in that way. I look back (briefly - shut up Don Henley) on the productions I have been involved in over the years and each one drifts off in its own bubble, never duplicated, never really returned to.

Life is full of forward momentum. Glaring cliché or not, life that has passed has passed. I see it pass on Facebook as friends I once had show up in friends of friends pictures, or as I share the room or dine at opposite ends of a friend-filled table with people who once had significance in my life and now have none. There's no controlling it. There's no mastering it. There's only allowing yourself the chance to flow with the current, through the seasons as they progress, and hoping that each will improve on the past.