The Circle of (Scripted) Life...

The bottom of my bookshelf is lined with 3-ring binders.

They sit in a neat little row, their spines of varying thickness, most of them black and white - with a blue and green thrown in.

Inside each binder is a script from a past show I've done. The pages are highlighted and dog-eared with scribbled shorthand in the margins and doodles where the director stopped us for notes.

I recycle the binders as I get new scripts. The old scripts come out and go into a bin labeled 'Scripts and Memorabilia'. There are two old paper boxes bearing the same label that contain everything I've done on stage prior to 2002.

I always enjoy pulling out the old scripts. A rush of memories always comes flooding back as I recall castmates and backstage shenanigans. Foreign concepts written in my own handwriting - or funny quotes from cast and crew - reading lines once as comfortable in my mouth as my own name... all new again. Documented proof of where I've been and the lives I've lived in this lifetime... some of which I remember vividly, some of which I can barely recall. Much like college, I suppose.

It's like opening a Christmas present that got lost in the closet during Spring cleaning years ago or thumbing through a long-forgotten photo album or finding baby clothes that your preteen once wore.

I received one contract and script in the mail today and will pick up another this evening. So... 'Lysistrata' was retired to the archives and 'Next to Normal' took its place. Likewise, I relocated 'Arms and the Man' in favor of 'Gypsy'.

These two binders will travel with me just about everywhere for the next four months. I will hold them, beat them, love them, curse them, cry, laugh, write, doodle and record revelations in them.

The pages within these binders will challenge and motivate me to be a better artist than I was when I performed their predecessors.

It feels like a graduation of sorts... another milestone in the circle of life. And though I'm excited and can't wait to start working on my new additions, my heart does a little 'Velveteen Rabbit' twinge as I pack away my old babies.

Out with the old and in with the new.

Tonight, I'm going to go drink some wine with my fellow showgirl. I will "twinkle while I shake it". She will "bump it with a trumpet". ...and all will be well with the world.