Only a little crash at the finish line...

When I said I would help with scenery for the local theater’s next play I did not fully comprehend what I was getting into.  Set painting, picking out vases and chairs are some of the tasks that came to mind.  What entailed was 4 weeks and 4 days of hard physical work, strategic thinking, and chaotic family schedule…and painting.  Lots and lots of painting.  What began as 8 X 10 backdrop panels ended up being 12 X 12.  And there were four of them.

Naima did not paint this!    Set design for the Opera Judith by Alexander Serov

I painted deciduous trees and pines in two seasons. Now, I am not a landscape painter.  Abstract realism is closer to my style.  So,  they came out more amateurish than I had hoped.  I use the excuse that I was painting on cheap drop cloths, using housepaint from Home Depot, with shitty brushes, while backstage folk regaled me with tales of yesteryear, all while working against a seemingly impossible deadline…but that isn’t much of an excuse. Did I mention that I have a chronic pain and fatigue condition?  Fibromyalgia is no joke.  It may not be well understood, but it is real and often daunting. I told no one at the theater about how I dealt with the pain of working so hard for a month.  So. Throw that in the mix.

One week before opening night the Technical Director called in a young college student to help out. I’m grateful for her help because it meant that I finished all four paintings in time

Naima did not paint this!  Set design for the opera Moïse et Pharaon, Paris, 1827. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

for opening night.  She asked to paint some details.  I went through many emotional responses and finally I said yes, feeling generous and grateful.  I may not have done it the way that she did, but again, I was grateful for the help.

Jump to opening night.  I went out with a friend for dinner then we went to see the play.  It was the first time I had seen it all the way through. The musicians did a great job, cramped like they were in the hot cave that is the jump on stage right. The singers/actors belted out their songs with gusto.  It was a right nice play.

The cast made short announcements at the reception afterwards.  They gave small gifts to the Director, some of the technical folks and then…they gave a gift to “the girl that helped with the backdrops, painted trim and lots of other things backstage”.  That’s right, the girl that had been around for a week, and added grass-looking slashes to my paintings with her fingers was getting acknowledged for her work on the backdrops.  The ones that I labored over for almost 80 hours.

Boy did my ego have a hard time with that.

Did I not work hard enough? Long enough? Was it like my friend said and it was just that the cast didn’t know me (I worked during the days so that I wasn’t interrupting their rehearsals at night).  Was I lured into thinking I did something special because I was told numerous times that in 40 years, no one had painted a backdrop for that theater before, much less four of them?

Did I crash at the finish line?  No, not really. The paintings were finished before opening night.  My ego was bruised at the finish line but I need to remember that it wasn’t my ego that was painting, so the bruising was ultimately self inflicted. I had an attachment to the outcome, rather than realizing the moments spent painting were all the joy I needed.

Panel #3, Day 1  -  Photo credit George Breed walkingflagstaff.blogspot.com

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