“Do Something That Scares You” – Part 2
I thought I should follow up with my “Do Something that Scares you Every Day” blog with how the opening of my play, Barbra’s Wedding, went. We rehearsed it for six weeks and coming from my Soap Opera background, that is a LONG time. I am used to memorizing 40 pages the night before and basically doing one take and forgetting about it on the way out the door. So this has been A LOT of rehearsing, but so incredibly worth it. For the first time in my acting career I really thought I needed that much time. We pulled the material apart right and left. Being on stage for a solid hour plus, with just two people having dialogue is a bear! Not to mention we move around a lot and have to deal with food and drinks and changes in wardrobe. You’ve all heard the expression, not being able to walk and chew gum…this is a thousand times worse, especially if food gets to flying (out of our mouths or otherwise). There are a lot of mishaps that can happen. Anyway, the night before opening night we were still breaking character and laughing at some of the crazy antics. I was beginning to wonder if we would be able to get through it in a professional manner.
Opening night came and everyone was excited. Finally “the baby” was going to born. A wonderful, loyal and supportive group of people came from all over the country, spearheaded by Sherry, Mandy and Fiona who were viewers from my soap life and were sweet to make the journey out west to see this live performance. Several different waves of people came and were a great audience. A special treat came when Hybrid Mom’s own Allison Rubin and her husband Noel came too. You see doing that “little something scary” brought me the gift of friendship. Thank you to all of you who came out to see the show!
Opening night went great and was a real high for all of us involved. We now strive to improve and try something different each night. Try to connect more and go further in areas. Each performance we are usually nervous and can’t imagine how the night will go, but we commit to concentrating on the play and each other and not worrying about who is there to watch. It is a small theatre that only seats 49 people, so people are exceptionally close…it’s interesting, but exhilarating too. I am so happy I pushed the envelope in my life and gave, the not so familiar, a shot. Below is a snippet of our performance.
Have you done anything that has scared or challenged you lately?
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Tags: Barbra's Wedding, Mary Beth Evans
Great clip. You guys look like you were having a lot of fun – you have a winner on your hands.
very funny clip!! Is that Sherry laughing on the clip? haha!
It was a terrific show, Mary Beth, and I’m so glad I was able to see it. This just shows you what you can do when you push yourself and do things that scare you. I hope you continue to scare yourself…because that seems to result in good things for us!
Mary Beth,
I am glad too you pushed the envelope and gave
this show a shot. I loved getting to see it!
You did a fabulous job! Things scare me every
day. some i meet face to face and others i don’t. You beat this challenge for sure.
Can’t wait to see whats next for you. i’m
sure it will be great.
Thanks for the clip! I wanted to see some more, though!
I really enjoy your column and share it often with friends. I just got back from a cruise and one of the excursions I took with my 15 year old daughter was a “Canopy and Eco-Challenge Tour” in Antigua. It involved 9 zip lines and 9 “challenges”, with little information about what the last nine challenges were.
The zip lines were a snap – I’d done those once before and even though I’m afraid of heights I was confident about the harnesses, etc. My daughter, who’s as nimble as a goat and very strong, mastered it quickly and was egging me on to go faster and keep up. I work out and am in decent (not
awesome) shape but I’m an athlete – and just shy of 50. So zip we did across hundreds of feet of open gorge.
The second set of challenges were quite another thing and here’s where we get to doing something that scares you. For the first big challenge we were asked to walk across a rope and plank bridge, using suspended ropes to go hand over hand from beginning to end. The planks were spaced about 18″
apart, were about a foot wide and were suspended by cables (think emergency fire escape ladder turned on its side and suspended 40′ above rocks and running water). Granted we had safety harnesses attached to the cable above but this scared the daylights out of me.and I made it.
I nearly fell off of another one like this further on, when I was really hot and tired. I almost lost my footing so I sat down (bad idea) and now I had to hoist myself up using a cable overhead and my safety cables for balance, get my act together and proceed. My daughter called out, “Mom, channel your inner yoga strength” to me and I pulled in my core, took a few deep breaths and made it. I was in tears but they were tears of relief and triumph when I got there.
The bottom line is that there’s not much that scares me sitting at my desk every day. Friends who find out they have cancer scares me. Children whose aches and pains don’t go away.that scares me. Finances occasionally make me