[Bon Jovi Lyric referring to having traveled 50% of the distance]

I am an inveterate fiddler. (Note: not the instrument)

I'll go to say, Dell's website, and kill time putting together the most expensive system I can manage.
Or the least expensive.
I'll fire up a video game and mess with the settings until all the physics of the game have been busted to hell.

I am the person the 'restore to default' button was created for.

So in a lot of ways this process is right up my alley. I get to beta test version after version of the text I'll be performing before getting caught on stage by an audience. Which I suppose is at its core an actors dream. To be able to say point blank (at an appropriate time no less) that a line of text isn't working for you, that you're unsure as to the motivation of the line, or that 'my character wouldn't do that' is gold. And it's not "whining", it's my job!

Unfortunately it also means that it's my responsibility. From here on in, with Draft 10 - likely the most final draft before we beat the hell out of the text in rehearsal - having come down Saturday night, I have I have to sell it. I have to own it. I have no excuses. That's pretty daunting.

There's also some wistfulness as we come down to the One True Script. There are forms and scenes and dialog that I miss.
For a minute there in Draft 9.3 I was a hero.
Up through Draft 8 we had a completely bizarre political satire wrapped in a wrestling scene.

Think about that.
Then realize that it was Ileana and I wrestling,
and I have roughly 80 pounds on her.

It was a lot of fun. But Dewey (and the whole team) has an obligation to tell the story we've decided to tell arrived at.
So a lot of those fun bits had to go. And we miss them.

But we've found new fun bits. We fit in not one but TWO songs. We've found some nice places to work in some video projections between 'real' scenes to add another layer to some pretty static staging.

You always love the child you've got, no matter what you dreamed.