Mondays

Okay so today was interesting.  I lost my temper which is something that does not happen to me often.  Well maybe it wasn't my temper rather my cool.  My feathers got a little ruffled. Lost in translation again.  I should know better I keep telling myself but the thing about cultural integration is that I am here to!  I matter!  Okay so what happened?  The show was going fine  until the curtain call.  Oh... before I forget a few of you have been asking about when the show will be on YouTube.  Well, I am not supposed to do that....stay tuned.  

Curtain call.  I wait back in the wings until the thick red velvet curtain comes down, there is a flurry and scurry of dancers and singers moving on the stage and off the stage.  I am moving onstage next to one of the male singers for our bow.  Normally I cross far upstage near the orchestra.  Today on the first of 5 shows I may have gone a bit further downstage than normal.  Well excuse the heck outta me!  I narrowly missed a handsome Japanese dancer.  I should know his name right?  I don't.  I will get it.  I am learning names but it is a challenge.  Everything doesn't sound entirely the same anymore like mush to my ear but now it is just a matter of me remembering what I hear.  Well, we did not collide (the handsome dancer and I), the curtain was down so the audience didn't witness our almost mishap, and all was well.  Or so I thought.  An hour or so later I was in the male dancer's dressing room watching episodes of Sex in the City and telling a story about me outsmarting the 8th grade bully Dardie at Memorial Jr. High.  When I was politely approached by the dance captain who had a book with all these drawings.  Now here comes the cultural part.  When someone speaks English to you,  or I should say speaks English to me.  I tend to comprehend and experience them from an English perspective.  My first error.  She goes on to explain to me all the exits of dancers and how I have to wait for this dancer to exit and I should follow behind the singer and wait a few seconds for this dancer and that dancer to clear me.  All the while she is pointing to these stick figures and squares and triangles in the book.  It looked like a football playbook to me.  I was a little pieved but I said, okay and went on about my 7th grade victory over the mighty 8th grader.  I told Dardie off and got the respect of the whole 8th grade!  Dardie never picked on me again and we even became friends.  

Second show of 5, curtain call  I do what I am asked by my Japanese peers......I'M LATE!!!   I smile and beam at the eager audience and do the curtain call but I was not happy.  All that goes on back stage is not as important to me as what happens to and for the audience.  'Ah Matt it's no biggie' I tell myself,  I quiet my ego who is going on and on about how, 'Well you the one who looks stupid and you trying to dart in and out and that is not what the director told you to do and you are out here looking late!  Like YOU don't know what you doing'  I hush my ego, push away the anger and that's that.  

After lunch my throat which I am still nursing back to health is in need of more and more water.  3rd show of 5.  After my big number I have a not so quick change into another costume for a group number.  Normally I go and switch in and out of costumes with no problem.  The only problem which isn't really a problem is that I have to go to the ladies room from the unusually large amounts of mizu (water) that I have been consuming.  There are lots of undergarmets that we wear to look so beautiful and sleek on stage so I have to take off  the one gown, my undergarmets and quickly put on a robe and slippers and make it to the bathroom which is at the other end of a long corridor.  So I am making my way with my baby blue robe and pink Crocs and I hear, in hushed hurried English, "Sorry, sorry Matt, sorry Matt!"  Well no one did anything so I turn to see who has done what to warrant such a sorry.  "Goooo!!!!"  The petite always polite dance captain is yelling at me- so I move to the side and let her pass.  Now remember, I am not normally in the hallway so I gather after she dumps one costume and runs a few feet ahead of me to two waiting dressers to put on another costume that I have interrupted a quick change.  I quickly quiet my ego, 'she didn't have to yell!  how the heck was I supposed to know!', explaining that well she didn't have to yell but she was in a rush.  Off to the the bathroom I rush and back into my now quick change to finish the show.  

A knock on the door and one of the twenty something stage mangers (there are so many of them) that we have is quietly saying, "Matt--ooh!"  which is how they say my name (Matt then oh!) I come out and he is explaining to me as best he can in his Jap-English that I was in the way and can I wait and on and on and on.  I politely nod, not feeling the need to explain my position or my bladders position and think, well just let this go and say "hi" -which means yes.  And on to the 4th show we go.  

At the end of the 4th show our dressing room is filled with Monday's usual suspects - myself and Dani, we are doing all five shows today, Chris, Jayson and Haydin.  There is a Australian TV show on the DVD player that no one is watching and napping or quiet conversation going on.  A lot of nothing really.  In enters James another lovely singer and vocal captain.  And dagonit if he isn't telling me that he and the dance captain have just watched the 4th show and that I didn't push the dancers hand exactly on the line.  I was a few seconds late.  Is it me or am I being punked?  Well I began saying, "now maybe we need to get an interpreter because I am feeling a bit picked on today and I am starting get upset."  The more I said, 'I'm starting to get upset', the more upset I became.  Before you know it I was raising my voice and being calmed my James.  I thought and said to him that yeah I get the whole, they do things a certain way but so do I.  I take my work and the quality of my performance very seriously and frankly this is getting on my nerves.  It is taking my focus away from the performance and on something that to me has nothing to do with nothing!  

Here is where my cultural learning came in.  It really was NOT personal.  I could not understand why the dance captain came to me once and then used the stage managers and then the vocal captain to talk to me.  It felt very personal and nit picky.  It felt petty.  I had my dukes raised ready for a junior high school battle.  3 different people approached me about things that to me were unimportant.  To them, I was told, they thought maybe I didn't know.  I am thinking, well if I haven't done it at all before, wouldn't you think it was a small unimportant error.  Mentioning it yes, but telling this person, to tell that person, to watch a video tape, have 3 meetings, get charts and talk to me??  Between what I thought, what is normal to me and whatever they were thinking there was a misunderstanding.  I mean come on.   I am sure wars have been fought over sillier things.